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THE LETTERS OF FRANKLIN K. LANE

Personal and Political

EDITED BY ANNE WINTERMUTE LANE AND LOUISE HERRICK WALL

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

Prom the thousands of typewritten letters found in his files, and from the many holograph letters sent to me from his friends in different parts of the country, we have attempted, in this volume, to select chiefly those letters which tell the story of Franklin K. Lane's life as it unfolded itself in service to his country which was his passion. A few technical letters have been included, because they represent some incomplete and original phases of the work he attempted,—work, to which he brought an intensity of interest and devotion that usually is given only to private enterprise.

In editing his letters we have omitted much, but we have in no way changed anything that he wrote. Even where, in his haste, there has been an obvious slip of the pen, we have left it. Owing to his dictating to many stenographers, with their varying methods of punctuation and paragraphing, and because the letters that he wrote himself were often dashed off on the train, in bed, or in a hurried five minutes before some engagement, we found in them no uniformity of punctuation. In writing hastily he used only a frequent dash and periods; these letters we have made agree with those which were more formally written.

With the oncoming of war his correspondence enormously increased— the more demanded of him, the more he seemed able to accomplish. Upon opening his files it took us weeks to run through and destroy just the requests for patronage, for commissions, passports, appointments as chaplains, promotions, demands from artists who desired to work on camouflage, farmers and chemists who wished exemption, requests for appointments to the War Department; letters asking for every kind of a position from that of night- watchman to that of Brigadier-General. For his friends, and even those who had no special claim upon him, knew that they could count on his interest in them.

One of his secretaries, Joseph J. Cotter, a man he greatly trusted, in describing his office work says: "Whatever was of human interest, interested Mr. Lane. His researches were by no means limited to the Department of the Interior. For instance, I remember that at one time, before the matter had been given any consideration in any other quarter, he asked Secretary of Agriculture Houston to come to his office, in the Interior Department, and went with him into the question of the number of ships it would take to transport our soldiers to the other side. And as a result of this conference, a plan was laid before the Secretary of War. I remember this particularly because it necessitated my looking up dead-weight tonnage, and other matters, with which I was entirely unfamiliar. …

"I have never known any one who could with equal facility follow an intricate line of thought through repeated interruptions. I have seen Mr. Lane, when interrupted in the middle of an involved sentence of dictation, talk on some other subject for five or ten minutes and return to his dictation, taking it up where he left it and completing the sentence so that it could be typed as dictated, and this without the stenographer's telling him at what point he had been interrupted."

His letters are peculiarly autobiographical, for whenever his active mind was engaged on some personal, political, or philosophical problem, his thought turned naturally to that friend with whom he would most like to discuss the subject, and, if he could possibly make the time, to him he wrote just what thoughts raced through his mind. To Ambassador Page he wrote in 1918, "I have a very old-fashioned love for writing from day to day what pops into my mind, contradicting each day what I said the day before, and gathering from my friends their impressions and their spirit in the same way." And in another letter he says, "Now I have gossiped, and preached, and prophesied, and mourned, and otherwise revealed what passes through a wandering mind in half an hour, so I send you at the close of this screed, my blessing, which is a poor gift."

At home on Sunday morning before the fire, he would often write many letters—some of them twenty pages in length and some mere scrappy notes. He wrote with a pencil on a pad on his knee, rapidly stripping off the sheets for me to read, in his desire to share all that was his, even his innermost thoughts.

To the many correspondents who have generously returned to me their letters, and with no restrictions as to their use, I wish particularly to express here my profound gratitude. The limits of one volume have made it possible to use only a part of those received, deeply as I have regretted the necessity of omitting any of them. In making these acknowledgments I wish especially to thank John H. Wigmore, since to him we owe all the early letters— the only ones covering that period.

For possible future use I shall be grateful for any letters that I have not already seen, and if in the preparation of these letters for publication we have allowed any mistakes to slip in, I hope that the error will be called to my attention.

Anne Wintermute Lane

March, 1922

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

Youth—Education—Characteristics

II. POLITICS AND JOURNALISM. 1884-1894

Politics—Newspaper Work—New York—Buying into Tacoma News
—Marriage—Sale of Newspaper

LETTERS:
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore

III. LAW PRACTICE AND POLITICAL ACTIVITIES. 1894-1906

Law—Drafting New City Charter—Elected as City and County Attorney—
Gubernatorial Campaign—Mayoralty Campaign—Earthquake
—Appointment as Interstate Commerce Commissioner

LETTERS:
To P. T. Spurgeon
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore
To Lyman Naugle
To John H. Wigmore
To John H. Wigmore
To William R. Wheeler
To Orva G. Williams
To the Iroquois Club, Los Angeles, California
To Isadore B. Dockweiler
To Edward B. Whitney
To Hon. Theodore Roosevelt
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
To William E. Smythe
To John H. Wigmore
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
To William R. Wheeler
To John H. Wigmore
To William R. Wheeler

IV. RAILROAD AND NATIONAL POLITICS. 1906-1912

Increased Powers of Interstate Commerce Commission—Harriman
Inquiry—Railroad Regulation—Letters to Roosevelt

LETTERS:
To Edward F. Adams
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
To Elihu Root
To E. B. Beard
To George W. Lane
To Charles K. McClatchy
To Lawrence F. Abbott
To John H. Wigmore
To Mrs. Franklin K. Lane
To Theodore Roosevelt
To John H. Wigmore
To William R. Wheeler
To Lawrence F. Abbott
To Charles K. McClatchy
To Charles K. McClatchy
To John Crawford Burns
To Theodore Roosevelt
To Samuel G. Blythe
To Sidney E.