I to start out by thanking long island for all theyve done for the society of president ial descendants. This is a society of president ial event. But Long Island University is in partnership with the society. And they have really gone out of their way and provided all kinds of resources not only to because is the first meeting or, as i call it, of the society of president ial descendants, but also all the other things connected with the society and with the Roosevelt School, which will be hall this is its home. And you can see what a magnificent job theyve done on this house which if seen it six months ago was or even three months ago was a work site if if a work site and i urge you to walk around and look at some of the rooms. The idea this is its not a replica of its themed on the white house and the and so we are hoping this will become a major destination here in long long island. All of long island stood ins, people, parties, sorts of thing. So were really very very proud of it and very, very very appreciative of Long Island University for all theyve done for the society now, the society of president ial descendants are just what it sounds descendants of president s. And at this particular event, again, first one, we have 12 president s represented and about 45 descendants. And relatives here, many of whom are in the room. You can recognize us by these. And if you see somebody with these on, itll tell you whether part of the roosevelt family, which a cohost of this event or a president ial descendant or both. And feel free to talk people. They love to talk to you about it. And we have a wide range going recent all the way back to monroe is our monroe guy here . I dont know. I guess hes not yet anyway. So its quite event the society really has three purposes. The first is to get together and know other and introduce our children to each other and take advantage of the different president ial sites will go to a different site every year. But were also very interested in civic education, which think is an egregious state in country. Now all we have to do is look at the medias interviewing of various people and were lucky if man on the street even knows who the president is, let alone we work. And one of the major problems, in my opinion, these days is people a lot of people have lost sight of it means to be a citizen you know you hear a lot of people demanding rights totally ignoring the responsibility side and our system and our freedoms all work because of focus on on our responsable cities particularly to supporting system which is not easy to support. And we all grind our teeth at various times, but to. Teach people how to get when they disagree and, what our what our system does, how our systems, when theyre very different points of view. And there will always very different points of view and there always have been various different points of view and we seem to have more recently lost ability for discussion, talk, compromise and all the things our government is built on. So anyway, we support public education. We created the first Civic National civics day on on february. It was october 27th. I got that right, as i should remember, because its teachers birthday, but thats not why we do it then its the date of the first first publication of the publication of first federalist paper. And so the other thing the society focuses on it better move on quickly. I wont get through my talk is president ial studies and we had our first award of a book award for the best book on president ial studies last august. It was ted widmer was on the verge, a book about lincoln just before he became president. Its really a great read. I recommend it. I recommend it. So anyway thats a little about the associations piety. I didnt introduce myself, and i guess nobody else did. Im tweed roosevelt. I am a great grandson of tr im also a professor here at lsu and the chairman of the Roosevelt School, the Roosevelt School, which again is just getting started, slowed up a bit by the by the pandemic, of course is a degree granting nonparty partisan institution which will focus will start with undergraduate degrees, go all the way to ph. D. It has a number of institutes underneath it. The the Global Services institute example, the institute for the presidency and. It has various joint degrees with different like an mba joint degree, so on. So its a very vibrant operation thats just going to get more so shortly will, one of the main things we see ourselves is two things really teaching students young kids about work, Government Service of various kinds, Service General and political areas. Of course, both politics and staff and also a place to bring thought leaders. Who are you go in government or business authors or media to wrestle with the current problems in the United States and a whole lot of other things. So thats pretty much where we are we also have under is the hornstein school, which is the hornstein center, which is a polling and youll hear about its getting to be a more and more interesting polling operation. So thats so the theme today is or at least my talk, the overall theme is what you dont know about. Tr and im going to talk about what didnt happen president s are remembered mostly for what they achieved and thats important and but often that equally important is they prevented from happening. But you dont hear much about that. You know if you go to the biographies of the or read any books about them, look at television shows, they all talk about president ial achievements and particularly in tr case, which well talk about today. But you dont hear almost anything and im going to tell you about three cases today. Youll hear much of anything about, things they prevent it. I mean, after all, it make for a very sexy. Television show to talk about. Heres what didnt happen. But in if you want to understand a presidency and you want to understand a president , his time, it is really often very important to look at these kinds of issues. So im going to talk today about three three of these three catastrophe fees that tr prevented. One of them is, the catastrophe that could have happened of insurrection, the civil on the level of the civil war. Now, that may come to you as a that you had no idea that tr i suspect faced that kind of an issue, but indeed he did. And i will tell you about it. The second one is preventing a major depression on lines of 1929. It could easily happened during his presidency. I bet you dont know anything about the panic of oh seven or very little. I will tell you that story, which is a fascinating one. And the third one is tr prevented World War Two from starting during his presidency and some things about that surprise you. So those are the three subjects im going to talk about. And lets start with the whole thing about civic unrest. The spark of this give you heres tr tr during his presidency. Doesnt he look young, he went, gosh, he was of course, the youngest president ever still is jfk the youngest president. Jfk was the youngest elected, but tr was younger, as you recall was put in by the assassination of mckinley. Anyway, this crisis was the coal strike of 1902. Any of you know anything about the coal strike . About two . Not. Yeah you may have read a few things about its mentioned here and there, but the dimensions of it is first of all, its a fascinating story. And the dimensions and were extraordinary. So let me get in line here. I got to get used to this. This is not my so ill get used to it. So thats what you see right . What you see. Okay. It was a major crisis at the time everybody knew about it and. Youll see why shortly because it affected every american in a major way. So you know, the cartoon was a good way of getting sense of whats going on in any president ial administration or any anything else. Look at the cartoons you get a very good idea. And plus, there are a lot of fun, so why not . So you can see from this cartoon really capital and labor were a major sort of situation as well arose this is the beginning of the unions in the country and i also i should remind you really beginnings of the mass media, particularly newspapers of the time. Keep that in mind that. Tr was basically the first president who learned how to use the media and pr well way so major player this was a guy named John Mitchell and he was the president , the united mine workers, the first or one of the first major unions. He had been a minor here himself. The mining in those that they were focusing on was coal. And mostly in pennsylvania. Although otherwise, easton pennsylvania. So in may 1902, he called out the workers in a strike against against was called the operators the coal companies, 147,000 people went out. I mean, this was not little i mean, whens the last time we had a major strike, anything like this in the united, its been a long time and so he called them out and the strike started now the mineworkers mineworkers were miserably treated by the operators, the owners. The mines were known as the operate miserable treated. These were a pay people who tried the best for them to make the most money possible was to get wages as low as possible. And they could do that because this was the during the period of major immigration to the United States and there was an Endless Supply of Foreign Workers who were desperate for work and, who would work for anything. And who had very little protection they mostly didnt speak english. They couldnt vote. They were kind of the forgotten people. So the miners depressing wages to levels that essentially were starvation levels all workers lived in Company Towns mostly anyway and were at the mercy of the operators who sold them at high prices and so on and so may have some idea of this. They had control of the situation and they kept depressing the wages and to depress the wages until it got to the point where a miner could not support a family, at least tended to be. Miners who had large, you know, often catholic, had large families and the situation got more and more desperate. And conditions were terrible in the mines. There was no safety net. Most the miners lived in company housing. If the miner well over almost entirely male course, if the miners were seriously injured or worked, they were throwed thrown off the Company Rolls thrown out of their houses and had nothing, you know, nothing to support them. They were very, very little social services in country. The church provided some, but a lot. So if a miner were killed, his wife had three or four children and nothing to fall back on, didnt speak english, didnt, you know, had nowhere to go. And so if you were lucky, you were immediately thrown out of your house. Furthermore, if you were lucky you had relatives or friends who could take care care of you, them these mothers, you were unlucky. You could wind up on the streets. I mean, it was really a ghastly and they continued the operators continued to take of all these people. Now, one of the most heartbreaking part of this was a group of kids, the breaker boys. And these were young kids who worked in the mines they as young as seven and eight. They worked the same ten hour, six day a week shift that their fathers did. And their conditions horrible. Here you can see what they was, these endless conveyor brought the mix of the of what was mined between stones and and coal and their job was pick out the stones and throw it away and let the coal go through. You can imagine what its like, first of all, on your hands. You can imagine second of all, this is lit because were taking a picture. It was mostly done and not total dark. But maybe a few candles or lanterns. And you see the guy the supervisor, if you will, standing there. What do you think that stick for . So this was really miserable and sort of the hearts of people as well. It should yes, sir. Does this as far as receiving pennsylvania assist throughout the state or the east mostly it was in the in the days of microfilm there, by the way. We were being filmed by cspan. If you dont want to appear in cspan, then keep your mouth shut shut. So we take it as your permission that if you talk. Yes, this was mostly and it was in many places. But, you know, pittsburgh, the northeastern coal area of of pennsylvania here, which is still somewhat depressed, quite depressed even even today. Anyway. So that was where it was taking place mostly the miners. The miners as i said there, they mostly eastern europeans. They didnt speak english. They couldnt vote. Nobody was there. Nobody was there for them. But the union, they really had so little power except with the union and. The union was extremely important. They were very, very loyal to it. And they just loved mitchell somebody. And here around, could you get me some water . They just loved mitchell and mitchell, the president of union. When mckinley says a cute story. When mckinley was the word spread amongst the miners that the president was dead, they assumed it was was mitchell and. They were ready to, you know, tear them the mines down and. Thank you very much. It they were ready. Tear the mines down when the finally their impression was corrected that it was some guy named mckinley they didnt know he was so anyway the lets see now. Tears. Well lets talk about work let i can use this technology i love it it tells me what the next slide is tears the operators were an extraordinarily arrogant wooden headed group of people know stop him they were saying you look at that picture. What do you think they were like warm, fuzzy types and. Well, so that was the other side. But of course, they had all the power. Now tears. One of his main political positions was what he called the square deal, which came from poker. I didnt figure that out until fairly recently, but came from poker and. That his idea was that everybody got same deal and that everybody had an equal chance. And here was a case clearly where there was no square deal or no equal, but remember, at the time government was not expected, did not have the power and did not play any role in a Labor Management dispute that was considered a private matter by. The whole country, everybody, government never done anything in this area. So he could look at the situation, could be appalled by it, but there wasnt much that precedent at least allowed him to do well as the strike on. Heres a nice cartoon that. The hopefully what would happen but of course it didnt happen at all so the strike goes on it start in the spring it goes on through the summer. Inevitably some violence. Mitchell did everything he could to keep the violence down. But of course it happened. And needless to say, the owners made the best of it. And how, you know, pointing the press who they had a good better deal with of you know these terrible miners and all the things they were doing so they just continued to stonewall. Meanwhile, the union, first of all, had the 47,000 extremely loyal Union Members and it had a big, you know, coffers of. Money had plenty of money, not enough for everything, but, you know, they were well financed. So this was a recipe for just going on the the operators would not talk to the union at all. It would have nothing do with the union. Their strategy. If we just ignore the union, get scabs in here, there are plenty of scabs out there. We can just keep going, keep doing it. But it really wasnt a long term recipe. But they didnt care about the long term they cared about the short term. Well, now come to coal. This is all about cold, anthracite, hard, cold, mostly. And coal. You got to think of coal was the the oil of the day everything ran on coal the whole manufacture ring system depended on coal, Government Service. Well, all heating was white coal. So if you didnt have coal, you didnt have heat well, that didnt matter in the summer, but it started to begin to matters things went on so basically nothing worked without coal and its cold became rarer and rarer and harder and harder to get because the 47,000 miners controlled most of the coal and they totally stopped any things began get worse and as winter began to approach people began to get more and more concerned. Heres a typical scene at the time of people trying to buy just handful of coal to put in their apartments. You know, there were apartments in those days. If you lived in new york city, for example, this affected the northeast more than anywhere else. If you lived in new york city, you a little coal fire of some sort. And thats what kept you warm. The building didnt provide cold and as winter approached, you couldnt get coal at any price, you know, except so outrageous that it wouldnt happen so it became more and more critical. No, no progress was being made as you could here. Uncle sam is to get worried, and they just wont talk to each other. The two sides. Well it was clear that tr had do something and. He got, you know, a lot pressure of getting involved. As i said, there was no precedent, there was nothing he could do so. He knew he had this. He had to do something and he knew he was going to get blamed either way. And, you know, he felt rather helpless about all this. Well, the mine mine owners were made of really two groups, that group of obstinate men ive already shown you. And the more enlightened owners who would have liked to pay a decent wage, who saw this as a problem and really what they saw the problem was anarchy. The Anarchist Movement was rising at the time a very violent and this was giving them more and more pressure. Anarchists had started bombing around to get this dont ask me to give you a description of what they stood for i dont think thats not really clear. But they stood for its what they stood against more than what they stood for anyway. So there were a lot egregious bombings around often connected in one way or another to a strike and the anarchists had this reputation being sauced or most of, of being foreign. And so you know, we always like to scapegoat the immigrants its an easy group to after all i cant vote out usually and so this was no different. And you can see from cartoon the attitude of many people that this was a foreign based thing. Now the anarchists for their part, bombings what we would now call terrorism, they called propaganda of the deed. And this meant, you know, creating terror and attention and power for themselves through the deed. The other major tool assassinations and anarchist assassinated mckinley. And you will recall think that an anarchist assassinated the archduke that started the First World War so they were a major force and they were a large force. Heres a headline. This is from slightly later. But this heres a headline from the New York Times imagine if we lived in a time now where eight cities were bombed in one night, including the attorney general and a judge, the u. S. Attorney general and federal judge. I mean, you could see how this terrorism could grip everybody. So the response. Business owners, not just in the mining but elsewhere, realized that if they didnt pay a living wage, this is the alternative. Eventually it would drive the workers into the arms of the anarchists. Well, so they didnt want that. But the problem was that if you owned a coal company, you want to pay wages. Nobody by your coal, its too expensive. So there was a problem with the system and you fix your phones. Everybody there was a problem with the system and something had to be done about it. So tr was thinking about what to do about this. He needed find a way to muscle into the conflict. He needed to figure out some way to do it. And then he had kind of a brainstorm. He said, you know, everybody this a two party dispute between the laborers and, the owners, but its really a three party dispute. Laborers, owners and the American People who were the victims here and who represents the american, the president does so that he felt gave him the standing muscle into this. So what he decided to do was unprecedented. He decided to call all the basically the the owners and the labor and mitchell to the white for a conference to try to beat some sense into them. And you know it seemed a pretty good idea the problem was that mitchell was very reasonable and even under withering criticism and disdain from the owners, he kept his cool and he made his proposal and his proposal was very reasonable he said, ill send the miners back to work if you, mr. President , will a conference of some you know, a group of people to to negotiate this or determine what the right answer is. And if both miners and the union the operators agree, will abide by whatever this group of people comes out with some very reasonable and independent group, the miners would agree to anything the union said, period. No, how reasonable. So eventually the whole darn thing fell apart and now tr found himself in a pretty difficult situation even though miners had no cat. I mean the union, the operators had no counter. So really the only offer the table was this and they had no other alternative, but it couldnt go to a negotiating table. If you only had one party. So began to figure out what can he do . So he had an idea. First of all, he to use Public Opinion. So he had got an agreement for all the people in that he had to have take down every word. And they did and he sent it over to the Government Printing office that afternoon and and they printed up the the entire transcript. You can imagine how they worked. These were long transcripts and they had them all ready for the press before deadlines for the next days. And so the press could look over and see how intransigent the operators were and how reasonable mitchell was. Tr and so this began to sway Public Opinion. And then the miners, i mean, the operators, i keep mixing these up. The. Just were stupid. So the chief operator, the chief guy, the head, you know, so the leader of the pack got up and gave it interview to the press in he said, you know believe it or he said the American People would be better protected not by labor agitate ears but by quote christian and men meaning himself and his christian men to whom god is in his infinite wisdom, has given control of property interests of the u. S. You can imagine how the public to that. So having secured Public Opinion now, what does he do so he he decided on a much risky air approach at approach he knew he would create a constitutional or suspected and he went what he did is he called in or the lead u. S. General the head of the whole army a guy named scofield who whos a civil war hero and highly respected. And he said, general scofield, if i order you to take 10,000 men, will you go to pennsylvania, seize the mines and operate them . Well, thats hardball, folks. Thats hardball and the general said yes, sir. And he said the courts or anyone else tell you to do something else. Will you still do what i tell you . Yes, sir. So tr now knew he had the wherewithal to force this, but he didnt to do it. Obviously this would be a huge, you know, president. You can just imagine what kind of crisis happening. Well, fortunately, at that, another solution had appeared and this is the form i didnt show you. Scofield, but there he is, by the way. You can see this was in the form j. P. Morgan. There he is j. P. Morgan. Now, jp bargain was the most respected businessman the country, one of the largest owned u. S. Steel will have more to say about that later. And he was a guy who could get the operators attention because the one who trade created the coal strike coal trust to with and so they would listen him and tr told him about his plan to nationalize the essentially nationalize the mines and so morgan realized not only was this serious but morgan himself very concerned about anarchy in the country and he could only maintain wealth if he could keep this country going. So he had every reason to support this. So he got the mine miners together and began to operate together and began to talk to him. Now im not going to go much more on this running out of time. I will tell you that doris kearns goodwin, who will be here tonight at our dinner, wrote a book called leadership in turbulent. Theres a whole chapter on this subject. So if you really want to know more about it, thats probably the best place to find it. And you can get a copy of the right here. Actually, i think its probably for sale right in the other room. So and shell sign it tonight. Youre coming. So anyway, basically, morgan brought everybody, browbeat them, told him what the alternatives was said. Remember, im head of this trust too. So buckle under. So that way they squeaked of it was morgan allowed the operators the owners the operators to take credit for making the suggestion of a conference or know negotiating so they could youll see this happens over over again with you they everybody it was alive it didnt matter it covered what they said so they could say we this great idea folks and you know with a gun at their head and the whole thing was settled. Miners got 10 increase. You know, the whole thing worked out. This was the first time government had been involved, completely changed. Labor workers, labor owners relationship. I think mostly for the better. Didnt always work, of course, but completely changed it. And we had a whole way of dealing with labor and most importantly, the anarchists basically lost a lot their base and although they continued be a problem, this was the beginning of the end of them. So the strike ended and tr sort of got the credit for it. One teres final statement about this i love it. Here he is. It says may heaven me from ever again having to deal with so wooden had a group of men. All right, lets turn to next one, which is where he prevented the 1929 happening. And it was a major financial crisis. It was called the panic of 1907. Anybody heard it . Youve heard of it. But probably dont know the full story. Its very and it was a major i mean, the economics of the country was in terrible shape at the time. And one man rose to the occasion to deal with this that was not tr but again j. P. Morgan and ill tell you a little bit about how the story worked. First of all, the Economic Situation we had a very serious whats called a liquidity problem. The United States, in other words, cash available cash. The San Francisco fire just happened. The earthquake and fire, that was a huge drain on cash. Other things happened like the europeans raised interest rates. So various reasons cash was getting to be more and more difficult to obtain to keep the whole system running. And of course, the whole system ran on cash. So all this really was a of impetus to get the whole thing and if something some shock to the system occurred, it could be even it might be minor. It could create a crisis. And thats basically what happened. So it started on october seven, teeth of oh seven. Now somebodys have any idea why these crises happened in october . They all would seem to happen in october. So on the 17th, what happened is two rather colorful. Named heintz and morse attempted to corner the Copper Market by buying all the shares in something called united mine company. Now and then they going to do something called a short squeeze. Now, im not going to try to explain short squeeze to you, but basically there is there is a thing in the market where which you dont have to own any shares of stock. But what you do is i make a deal with you and i say in three weeks on this date, i will deliver to you ten shares of United Company of montana and. There would be a price involved which would be a little higher than todays price. And the reason i would do that is because think the price is going down. I dont own any shares at the moment, but three weeks from now i can buy a whole bunch of shares cheaper and then stick you with them because youre now stuck with more and more expensive, you know, paid more, more for the shares. Now thats a thats a short, a short squeeze is something that people realized that if you could own all the shares in a company, then when the short sellers had to come in, you buy lot of short contracts. When the short sellers came to you, you could sell them shares of any price wanted and you could make a huge and they would be bankrupt. So thats the idea. But whats critical about it is you got to have enough money to, buy all the shares out there. You pick one company. So they picked united united mine company of montana. Which one of them happened to have been president up before . And they went to the knickerbocker and a couple of banks and bought and bought as much money as they could and they bought as many shares as they. Unfortunately for them they didnt buy enough shares. So when the squeeze took place got squeezed, they got squeezed because they couldnt sell their shares. These people, other people, they could buy it elsewhere. And so they were their Brokerage Firm were thrown into bankruptcy. So okay, you know this small operator who cares part of the problem is that the Knickerbocker Trust and the other banks, they borrowed money. Their assets were in these and they now suddenly the bottom bottom dropped out. I hope this is sort of clear to you the. Bottom dropped out of their assets and they began to look shaky so their deposits three places people put their money in there just like banks although they have one critical difference, banks are required at that time to keep 30 in reserve in case runs, people ought to pay for things their only to keep 5 . So when people started demanding their money, thinking, my god, i better get there first before anybody else gets there. They were immediately thrown in a tremendously vulnerable system. Brunson thank you all remember from was its a wonderful world, you know your wonderful life. Its a wonderful life run on the bank. Its way so heres the Knickerbocker Trust facing a very serious problem. And that serious problem is a run. Now, if it were just the Knickerbocker Bank or maybe one or two, it wouldnt matter. But infected the whole country and their view, all the trusts and all the banks. And so this began to and escalate and. It looked really serious. So it was time to bring in the big gun. Jpmorgan. Jpmorgan had dealt with these these kinds of crises. Remember no federal way of designing even a federal bailout. Theres no Federal Reserve, just no way for the feds to deal with this. Theyd been happy to leave it up to the financiers to solve these problems by putting enough liquidity in the system that. It might work. The financiers were beginning realize that the system was getting too big. And this might not work forever. But in this case, the country turned to jp morgan. He had the respect, he had the cash. Hed done this before in back in. When was it . I think anyway a few years before, believe it or not. Oh, in 1893. A few years before the Us Government was running out of gold. Now everything was backed by gold. So you can imagine they didnt have enough gold to back the currency. What terrible situation. So they would not having the systems they have now. They went to morgan in the rothschilds to borrow 300 million. All the money ill here will be in current dollars and that what it would be today 300 million and that was enough to stop that crisis. But in the process Something Like i cant remember, 400 banks went and unemployment went to 25 . So everybody remembered that so getting back to this story, they knew exactly how how dangerous the situation was. So jp morgan was, a religious man happened to be, i think in North Carolina at some religious conference when this all started. He came back a couple days later and went went to his small house in new york, 36th street, which the headquarters for this now the Morgan Museum of was the headquarters of taking care of all this. So first of all, he let it be known he was willing to let the knickerbocker and a couple of other banks involved under because they were, quote, the sinners and he would only support people who werent sort of involved in this whole process. So the first problem was the was the Trust Company of america the Trust Company of america. It had nothing to do this but was facing a run and had cash problem. And so morgan along with two other banks bought bought the trusts assets in other words, put cash into it to the amount of a court heard of 1,000,000,000 in cash. And that was enough to keep the the the trust open for one more day. What, one more day . So the next day the us treasury stepped in the treasury put three quarters of 1,000,000,000 in cash, in us cash. And this is where jd rockefeller, John D Rockefeller steps in that a wonderful picture of him. He stepped to the plate. Now he was the richest man in america at the time, richer than morgan, and he put in a total. Of 300 million that night. Were talking about that night. So that was a total of 1. 3 billion put into the trust. And that was enough to pay all the depositors and this sort of went away. Now, by the way, rockefeller had said that he was willing to risk one half of all his capital on saving the situation. You ask why . Because he knew what alternative was. If the whole system down, hed lose everything. And so would everybody else. Well, during this, the stock market is in trouble. You can see there what it is. And this is a real crisis for. Real people. And here we have the headlines in the oakland tribune of a broker or somebody involved in this who shot himself. And this was by any means an isolated event. I love this cartoon. I dont know if you can it says bloomberg. You see the stock market price in the back and the line at the at the right and they were all lining up. It wasnt quite that bad. But but anyway, it gives you kind of kind of a hint. So the drought of. Was beginning to cause all kinds of problems at the stock market and elsewhere i mean, theres no cash it theres liquidity. So love to say you learned a new word some of you liquidity has disappeared so a second crisis started. Now and there was a guy named ransom. Interesting ransom thomas, whos head of the new york Stock Exchange. And he went to morgans office at want. These times are important at 130 on thursday october 24th and said that he would have to close the stock market early because they were running out of cash they needed cash strapped right. Well, you can imagine what would have happened. The stock market were closed early. I mean, disaster. So thats at 2 00, 2 00 now. Its half an hour later. Hes got all the major bankers in new york in his office. Morgan does in his office. And he told that if this didnt get dealt with, 50 stock houses would fail that day. So they needed to provide. He immediately and he gave them 10 minutes, 10 minutes. He to provide three quarters of 1,000,000,000 in 10 minutes. Well, it took him six, but they did it and they got the money to the stock market before closed that day. So that transferred, you know, close to 1,000,000,000 to style solve that. So everybody heaved, a huge sigh of relief you know maybe maybe things are stabilizing. Well, they werent. The mayor of new york, a guy named george mcclellan, came privately. Nobody knew about this until quite a bit later, came privately to morgan and said the city will go bankrupt. And because of the liquidity crisis, borrow money in the short term market, there was, no short term market that. And so the city would have to go bankrupt. Imagine that would have done bankrupt new york city to the country and so morgan said, you know, how much is that short term borrowing you need . 300 million. Wrote him a check bought the entire thing. Oh my god. So weve gotten through that one and now believe or not, the next thing were now in the 26th of october, major Brokerage Firm in the United States was called more schenley more in schenley was highly respected and very good. But the problem was they had a lot holdings in something called tennessee coal iron, tennessee coal iron and railroad company, and that stock had plummeted for some reason. And they looked like they were going to go under. So. Morgan this point, who was really fed up with this whole thing, decided he wanted end it. So he called all the bankers in york and stock people and everything to his to his mansion. I should show you. I did show you. No, i didnt. There it is. Theres tennessee coal company into office, into his house at what time was it . Let me see. He locked him this thing at 3 a. M. Sunday morning, 3 a. M. He gets them all into his house, puts him in the library, locks the door, says, im not going to let you out. You give me enough money to end this. You know, we cant go on having crises. And they you dithered and gathered and he said, heres ill do, i will buy. The tennessee coal company, or rather, ill have my Company Steel buy it. Thats u. S. Steel there. Buy it. And so that stopped that thing. And who saw put cash into it so we got to get enough money do this. So they did it a little bit more and by 4 45 a. M. Sunday morning, they signed so there was one problem and thats where tr the thing. Tr had his whole policy was around controlling business. And the biggest business in the country was u. S. Steel. And he had told morgan thats know, you got to play by the rules. You cant, you know, just keep building and building your company and here they were going to vast increase the size of u. S. Steel so they had to convince tr could have stopped it. Tr to, you know not not challenge this deal and so morgan sent two of his representatives down to washington. Tr had been sitting on the sidelines the whole time. You know much about. They didnt know the details. He wasnt particularly finance, so they sent bacon. It was a tr at harvard and another guy down to washington negotiate to get him to accept this. So they went they lined up in washington. Oh, i dont know. You know, early early monday morning. And they go immediately. The white house, they demand to see the president. Cotton lou, his secretary says, im not going to like the president. So they had to cool their heels until i got up breakfast. Now the markets opened at ten tr was at at around nine they came in and they said mr. President heres the situation the country will go into terrible financial situation unless you approve this deal. And we need an answer now. And by he meant now, because the market was now less than 45 minutes from opening and tr consult anybody, tr had to go totally against his his you know, plan. He tr had to understand the of the situation he did and he approved it. Uh, a few minutes later, crisis was over. Market opened. No problem. The whole thing over. Isnt it amazing to me how a few minutes can make a difference you know in that conference earlier it was the leeway was 10 minutes with the Stock Exchange 10 minutes. Its an amazing story. So thats the story i was going to tell you another story about about. Well, i dont have time now, but ill tell you another story about hetty green, Richest Woman in america. Youve probably never heard of. When she died. She was the richest in the world. She put in 3 million here. Just show you quickly. Well, no. Anyway. And she was part of it. She was an extraordinary woman. Anyway, the fed, as a result the Federal Reserve was acquired and all sorts of things happened that ended all this. I was going to tell you a neat 911 story. Ill tell you it very truncated. Imagine 911 if youd gone to your and you couldnt take money out, that there was no liquidity. So the so the guy the staffer there was instead of the chairman of the of the fed out of the country and incommunicado a staffer had to make the decision to provide liquidity to the banks. You will certainly understand this we have a good banker who knows everything about it. He had to get liquidity to the banks so that you could go to your atm. This is cash. He had to get cash. Were talking about. 200 million in 2 hours. And he did it. So none of you, im sure, had trouble getting money. You imagine the power of the government to be able to put 200 billion, billion . They say million. I meant billion dollars. Billion into the system. So extraordinary extraordinary theres had a green. Just to give you an idea she was like a bag lady when she came into guys they didnt recognize her at first when they recognized her, she said, you know hetty green, they knew was she said to morgan, how much do need . 300 million. She opened her battered purse, took out an old checkbook, wrote a check for 300 million and walked out of the room. Oh, isnt that amazing . And she. There she is. Im sorry. Didnt show it to you before. Would you let through the police lines . No. So its an extraordinary story. Happens to be a relative of mine through my. But the money didnt come. So so anyway theres a whole story about her you might want to read now im going to to go through this quickly im afraid. Lets see it. Lets do wars quickly. So im sorry. Not going to have enough time to do this. Give this justice. Let me just say that t. R. Won the nobel prize for peace. A lot of people surprised about that. But if you study his his quotes carefully make a difference between where he was when he said them. If he was really bellicose he was out of power. When he was in power, he didnt he had a much more nuanced approach. He was absolutely determined to maintain the peace during his presidency. And in fact, he succeeded. He was the only president in the 20th century who did fight, have a single soldier at an enemy combatant during his entire presidency, the only one, anything that he create, theres a little bit left the philippine war. But he he he managed to keep the peace and three times he was threatened with the possibility of world war everybody the time knew that the world sitting on the edge of war, you know, we all kind of think that didnt happen till 15, but everybody knew, it was happening three times. He prevented it well first was the russojapanese war just the first was the russojapanese war which he settled and for which he won the nobel prize. The second was a war in morocco, which also could have led to a world war. Its kind of boring. So i wouldnt tell about that. And the third is the venezuelan. And now to say just a few words about that, what was the german kaiser. And the brits and italians were owed a large of money by venezuela. Many of the south american governments and caribbean governments were irresponsible. Theyd borrow lots of money, spend it, and wouldnt be able to pay it back. Venezuela, ala wasnt even able to pay the interest. And so the kaiser theory, theres the head of it named. Guys name is castro, believe it or not. So why are castro such troublemakers . And so the germans and the kaiser, you see, theyre the kaiser is is sort of seducing the italian and getting john vole to join him. And the whole issue was, we were concerned because of the Monroe Doctrine and that whole concept. But we didnt want any europeans or any other country to get a foothold in the americas and t. R. Was afraid the kaiser was had that idea and, had the idea that he wanted to gain some control over the panama canal and t. R. Didnt want either, but he wanted to deal with the kaiser. So he didnt start a war. But get this resolved. And the kaiser was really, uh, really touchy, you know, dealing with a rattlesnake here. Wrong. Stephan he could get into real problems. So to make a long story short, we well, the. The kaiser thought t. R. Was a bluffer and this is a great thing but tr actually totally did not believe in bluffing he thought as a political strategy it was failed it was not good should not bluff you should always be willing to follow through and so it in spite of that he had to convince he had to convince the kaiser that he wasnt about the fact that he was willing to send the sand the military, the navy, particularly down there and deal with kaiser. The kaiser bombarded theres the kaisers admiral guy named kirk turk, who looks like what you think he ought to look like. There were bombardments back and forth tr developed a new strategy to this. And basically it was dont waves, dont scream and yell dont be dont read what you think tr was but do behind the scenes do everything quietly, do what you can so tr sent some subtle signals signals to the kaiser that he was serious. He appointed john admiral dewey the most famous admiral in the country, an admiral who defeated the germans in. Manila during the spanish face them down anyway, in manila, the spanishamerican war. And so he appointed him. He gave him as his as command ship. You know, usually commanders were battleship ops or something. He gave him the president ial yacht so the germans would have to sink the yacht. You can imagine what that symbol was. And also he did things like cole call the six sailors back to their ships. You know, none. This was public. You know, it was publicly that. But none of this was any there was no, you know, saber rattling, belittling the kaiser or anything and so but what he can do is convince the kaiser. He also backchannels. Heres the german ambassador to try to convince kaiser he wasnt bluffing. He had the fleet. They were already in puerto rico go down and the there he is. Im sorry. And the the germans were disadvantaged. They had long supply lines. They were surrounded an american lake, so to speak, just didnt make any sense. Well, what happened is t. R. Called in the german ambassador gave him i think it was 12 days to agree to come to arbitration. On the 10th day, the ambassador came to the white. They talked about the weather. They didnt talk about anything else. Had the ambassador get ready to leave the ambassador was a timid soul, terrified of the kaiser never reported it to the kaiser and so sergei ready to leave t. R. Said well whats whats the story oh the kaiser wont accept any. T. R. Said, in that case in his fiercest way. I reduce the deadline by 24 hours, and i will order the ships to see day. Well, lets finally and the timid ambassador and they threw sources. The kaiser finally came his senses and this whole thing ended. Nobody knew what t. R. Did in this. All the credit went to the ambassador to the kaiser. Kaiser could say, i came up with the idea of negotiation. And similarly, youve heard before. And so t. R. Faced them down, nobody knew what tr done behind the scenes. In fact, when he put it in his autobiography some years later, he was, you know, charged, being just selfish and grand izing, know were getting there self aggrandizing. And it wasnt until. 2007 that a young naval officer wrote a book that proved it basically surfaces but prove that t. R. Was right you know wed really done all this its interesting to think compare this to the cuban missile at the time and the similarities and differences between John F Kennedy handling that and tears so that having run out of time i will have to bring to an end and im cheating you im sorry, but im around to answer any questions later. Ill take one question. So at least i say i did it. But ive got to keep moving on after that. Somebodys got a question. Yes. Japan, the russian. What i can do. What about japan and russia and t. R. . Thats a whole long story. Im going to take another question. Ill be happy to tell it to you. Its a great story. Its a different lecture. Anyone got aso. I want to start out by thanking Long Island University, the Roosevelt School and of course the society of military descendants for the privilege of addressing you this morning. As we said, im the dean faculty and academic programs at
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