America's Money Machine

T HE
2.
The First Shock Wave
SIGNIFICANCE of the Harriman-Fish rupture lies first in the
shock it gave to the financial markets, and to public confidence in
the integrity of the national financial leadership. More importantly, however,
it served as the fuel that heated to the boiling point the Rooseveltian
antagonism to Big Business.
Roosevelt, like so many Americans born to wealth and position who,
since the appearance of Das Kapital, have been guilf-ridden over their
blessings, early became a reformer and pursuer of causes. His antecedents
went back to the Dutch patroons ofcolonial New Amsterdam, and
his family had been prominently identified with banking and finance in
New York. In his youth Roosevelt entered politics, became a State assemblyman
but, his health failing, he went West for recuperation and took
up ranching for a while. His speech and manners ever afterward showed
more the gravel of the frontier than the polish.of civilization. Returning
to politics, he became famous for his fighting speech and his advocacy of
the "strenuous life" and political reform. The episode in American history
that is called the Spanish-American War became a further opportunity
for flamboyant leadership, when he organized a regiment known as
the Rough Riders and led them in his dashing charge up Sanjuan Hill.
He was now a national figure and won election as Governor ofNew York
in 1898. His reform administration alarmed his opponents who maneuvered
quietly to inter him politically in the vice-presidency; but McKinley's
death by an assassin's bullet in 1901 put Theodore Roosevelt in the
seat of power. He promptly began his' efforts to reshape the Republican
Party in his own image.
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