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Teddy Roosevelt

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21

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2020-08-30

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2020-08-30

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1. “The spirit of the antitrust law. And the reason I bring that up is because I always think like when you're trying to figure out what's actually happening as opposed to what you're being told is happening is you ask who benefits. And Roosevelt undoubtedly benefited from this because this one line it says people loved him for the enemies he has made. And so he's undoubtedly getting a lot of votes from people that are sick and tired of the Morgans of the world. But at the same time, Morgan may have a personal dislike for Roosevelt, but it doesn't stop him from being pragmatic and by contributing and making sure he still has influence.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “So with the successful resolution of the coal strike and Roosevelt following through on his promises to hold the richest people in the country as accountable to the law as the poorest person, he becomes incredibly popular. He goes out at this point in the story. He goes out on a nine-week tour of the country to speak directly to, this is before, right before the campaign starts. And this one sentence was really interesting, gives you an idea of how voracious a reader that Teddy Roosevelt was. In between stops on this nine-week trip, he read the 40 books.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “It was this agreement. There's a lot more back and forth. I'm going to skip over, but I'm going to give you the punchline here. It's this agreement that wind up getting the coal miners back to work. But I want to talk about Roosevelt's reaction after this happened. He made clear his gratitude to Morgan. My dear sir, Roosevelt wrote in a letter, let me thank you for the service you have rendered the whole people. If it had not been for you and your going into the matter, I do not see how the strike could have been settled at this time and the consequences that might have followed upon it being unsettled when cold weather set in are in very fact dreadful to contemplate. I thank you and congratulate you with all of my heart. Morgan never sent a reply.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “So it says later that evening, Morgan committed a surprising act of diplomacy. He presented the Corsair Agreement to Roosevelt in person. Roosevelt still believed that Manhattan was the country's most, quote, troublesome, insular possession. Yet they set aside their mutual suspicion and antagonism to cooperate as the country faced the potential devastation of a winter without coal.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Crazy injuries. He keeps getting an accident because he's just a wild, you know, that the way they describe him with a damn cowboy. That's probably a good description. He winds up getting into some kind of accident with his horse-drawn carriage, falls out. They think maybe his bone and his leg is infected. So it says, Roosevelt anxiously considered his options. Usually when he needed to distract himself, he rode hard and tramped miles. Anything to sweat and strain. That's very similar to this emphasis that's put on vigorous exercise as a ways to relieve stress. When I read the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, he would do the same thing. He would do boxing and all kinds of physical activity to try to help relieve the stress his mind was experiencing. So he turned to his other favorite activity, reading. And he asked the librarian of Congress to select books from him for him.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “So, you may be asking, okay, why does Roosevelt need Morgan? Roosevelt calls in the union leader and all of the executives and owners of the coal mines that are currently on strike and tries to broker a deal. But again, he has limited executive power to do so. And one of the things he's thinking about doing at this point, which he doesn't know if he legally can, is if people are going to die because you guys can't come to some kind of agreement and we need coal to run railroads or schools being closed at the time. It's crazy how important this resource was that he's, you know, he's thinking about nationalizing the coal mines. But the executives come in and they have the very similar opinion to JP Morgan where they essentially tell mind your own damn business. This is between us and our workers and we're not listening to you. And that's where Teddy realizes that Morgan actually has more power than he does in the situation. And why is that? Because Morgan has financed a lot of these coal mines.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “This part of the book, Teddy Roosevelt and Morgan have a meeting and I just want to give you the description after the meeting, what happens. And the note of myself is JP is used to being in control. Teddy is taking a back at his lack of respect for the presidency. After Morgan left, Roosevelt marveled at the financer's imprudence. That is the most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view, he said. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “A gentleman. Now he called the president a lunatic. Roosevelt had changed the rules on the sly, and Morgan would never forgive him. So now he just goes after Morgan, but as a byproduct of this, he's also going after James J. Hill. And so we in this section we see James J. Hill and Roosevelt go at it. And he threatened the president, the way they talk to Roosevelt's very, I'm sure this is how they talk to everybody. And he threatened the president and attorney general that if they do fight, they will have their hands full. This is Hill and will wish they had never been born when I get through. The president had some choice words for Hill expressed privately. He detests me, but I admire him, Roosevelt said. He will detest me much more before I am done with him.”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Roosevelt promised the working class and single to big business that the government would not be a spectator in the new economy. So this one sentence is exactly what Morgan objects to. And so Roosevelt has the Department of Justice prosecute Northern Securities. And this is where we see Morgan's view. Again, this is a change in the relationship between presidents and some of the richest, most successful business people in the country. The president had asked his Attorney General to prosecute Northern Securities for violating the Sherman Act. Roosevelt should have warned him, Morgan grumbled. They could have worked it out a deal in private. Presidents didn't keep secrets from the captains of industry, and the House of Morgan had never before been surprised by the White House. Morgan traded in confidences and negotiated on shared assumptions. He couldn't do this to Roosevelt. That's why they're destined to fight. He had considered”

   2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Dedicated just to his life in the future. But he was at this point hero. That's part of what made him so popular when he took the rough riders and fought down in Cuba. And he kind of had that mentality even when he was president. So at this point, I think there was three or four presidents shot within the last 25 years when McKinley was shot. And so they were very, Roosevelt would always want to leave the White House and go ride horses, go out into the nature, and they were always very concerned about his safety. But it says, Roosevelt protested that he didn't need bodyguards because he carried his own revolver. Imagine that happening today. He trained with wrestlers, boxers, and jujitsu masters, and often shared amused accounts of his mishaps, swollen bruises, bloody gashes, sopping wet and muddy clothes, stiff and sore.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “And he's going to now have more power. So kind of backfires And so this is what Roosevelt is saying about this point in his life. All the big moneyed interests that make campaign contributions of large size feel that favors in return are extremely anxious to get me out of this state, meaning New York. He called the vice presidency an irksome, wearisome place where I could do nothing and told Platt he would rather be a professor of history.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Fiber of brain and the heart and the muscle, we must dare to be great. So back to his public pronouncements. His aim he wrote later was to break down the secrecy that allowed the invisible empire of politicians and high capitalists to thrive. Roosevelt signed bills that promised stricter regulation of working conditions, gave factory inspectors more authority and resources, and restricted state employees' labor to eight hours a day. That's what he's doing right before. He's the governor of New York. He's the vice president. One thing I found most interesting is that Teddy did not want to be vice president. So this is a little bit about that. Roosevelt hoped he would have a second term as governor to make good on these promises. Then you have a lot of these like secondary characters in the book. They're like the highest ranking members of political parties, even if they don't happen to have...”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Bent only on amassing a fortune. These men are equally careless of the working man whom they oppress and of the state whose existence they imperil. I don't know if you know this. A lot of people are surprised. Teddy Roosevelt was an author. He wrote several different books. I'll go into more one of the things I most admire about him is he was a voracious reader at paces that I could even never even match. And I'll go into more of that in a little bit. But he's also, you can tell from his speeches I'm sure he had help writing this as well, but he's got a lot of these great lines spread throughout his public addresses. And I think part of that is the fact that he'd spent so much time writing before I get to another one of his great lines. I really, you see his philosophy in life. He says, a soft, easy life is not worth living. If it impairs the”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Theodore Courted. He was the opposite of Morgan in the sense that he used press as his ally. Morgan avoided the press. And so in the press, there's a lot of reports on his political beliefs and what he's trying to accomplish. This also, I think, is a very smart strategy that Theodore Reservoir had. When he goes for re-election, it was a landslide. And a lot of that is because even the Republican Party at the time didn't really want him to run again, but he was so popular with the public, large part because he spoke directly to them through the press that they couldn't find anybody that could beat him. But before we get to that point, we see, I'm just going to throw you some highlights here, gives you an idea of what was important to him. So it says his political pronouncements became more forceful. Direct quote from him. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Roosevelt wrangled horses and herded cows. He slept outside, hunted bears, bucks, and rabbits. He killed for food and sport and trophies, and the bloody thrill of pursuit helped blot out his despair. Social conventions were scarcely observed, personal histories left unspoken This is a crazy sentence. Think about this and how just deep and dark his feelings have to be. Roosevelt later wrote that he practiced the diplomacy of the badlands, not uttering one word that could be avoided. Okay, so now let's get into what they're fighting over. And this is a reminder what you and I also learned on Founders No. 139. JPMorgan does not want competition. He wants cooperation and he wants control. And we see a part of doing this is a lot.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “It's interesting to note how he deals with this tragedy. He goes out into the wilderness, a huge part of Teddy Roosevelt's life is his love of nature. So it says the Dakota Badlands, a curious, forbidding wonder of time-worn rocks and water, held the last grassy stretches of a vanishing frontier. It was there that Roosevelt retreated in the summer of eighteen eighty four. He needed its bleak expanses and raw physical tests of endurance to chase away the depression bearing down on him, and this is why he describes why he constantly stays in motion, especially in times of high stress and depression. Black care rarely sits behind a writer whose pace is fast enough, he wrote. He built a house, bought several thousand cattle, and became a rancher. The Northern Pacific Railroad cut through this territory and to encourage business promoted the creation of a new beef industry beyond the Texan Plain.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “I think something else that's useful to understand the mindset of Teddy Roosevelt is he experienced one of the greatest tragedies anybody could ever experience. His mother and his wife die on the same day. So it says at 3 in the morning, his mother, 48 years old, died of acute typhoid fever. Alice, that's his wife, she was giving birth to his child. Alice died less than 12 hours later. She was 22. Theodore drew a big black X on the page on that page in his diary and wrote has gone out of my life.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Before he sputtered. Roosevelt was unskilled at creating alliances. He shouted and paced the aisles. He haranged. I would listen to no argument, no advice. I took the isolated peak on every issue, and my people left me. But he obviously learns from this mistake. He says, later on he would learn to compromise, which he called being practical, and to work with men as they were from Roosevelt. I turned in to help them, and they turned to and gave me a hand, and so we were able to get things done.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Roosevelt promised he would obey no boss and serve no click. And it's just a more great description of his personality. Roosevelt could be affable and often imperious. Certain he knew what was right and that his upbringing and education would convince others of that. Again, you could say the same thing for JP. He bored into issues in people. He sponged up details. This is a friend of his describing Roosevelt. He was just like a jack coming out of the box. When they attacked him, he would fire back with all the venom imaginable. This is maybe the greatest single sentence describing Theodore Roosevelt in the entire book. He was the most indiscreet guy I ever met, that kind of personality, especially when he was young and had that kind of personality, did not do very well in his early political career. Here's a description of that from Teddy Roosevelt. I rose like a rocket, he said, but it didn't take long, though.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Is a great description of him. Theodore loved to row, meaning row the boat, in the hottest sun over the roughest waters and in the smallest boat. He wasn't interested in commerce or money. Roosevelt decided instead to become a public man. He would bring his morality and energy to an institution he believed didn't have enough of either. He expected to change society in the ways he had learned from his father.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “I am afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don't know what he'll do, Morgan said. He's afraid of me because he does know what I'll do, Roosevelt said. Roosevelt and Morgan were bound for conflict. Roosevelt was a new kind of president. He believed American capitalism needed a guiding hand. So did Morgan. Each assumed it should be his own.”

    2020-08-30 · Founders · #142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source