IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR 67 



go out in midwinter for want of coal had nothing but praise for this 

 salutary interference. 



When the RepubHc of Colombia refused to sustain the action for 

 the building of the Panama Canal and the State of Panama seceded in 

 consequence and proclaimed its independence, President Roosevelt 

 with what seemed unnecessary haste recognized the new republic and 

 proceeded to negotiate with it instead of Colombia. His impatience 

 in this instance seemed to run away with his judgment, for a little 

 delay would not have stood in the way of getting what he desired. 



In November, 1906, his interest in the progress of the canal took 

 him in person to Panama. Here was a flagrant violation of another 

 precedent. No President before him had ever gone beyond the juris- 

 diction of the flag. But Roosevelt lost no sleep in consequence ; he saw 

 what he wanted to see, and the solar system suffered no disruption. 



What else did he do? During the three and a half years of his 

 first administration the country owed several important executive acts 

 to him. In addition to settling the anthracite coal strike and recog- 

 nizing Panama, he prosecuted the Northern Securities Company for 

 violating the anti-trust law; he established reciprocity with Cuba; he 

 created the new Department of Commerce and Labor ; he founded the 

 permanent census ; he reorganized the army ; he strengthened the navy ; 

 he advocated the national irrigation act which is reclaiming vast arid 

 tracts to cultivation; he submitted the Venezuela imbroglio to The 

 Hague Court of Arbitration; he sent America's protest against the 

 Kishenev massacre to the Czar of Russia. 



The way the latter was done was an apt illustration of the Roose- 

 velt method of doing things. He well knew that if the petition was 

 sent to the Czar in the usual way he would not receive it and his gov- 

 ernment would probably hint that this country had better attend to its 

 own business. 



Roosevelt cut the Gordian knot in a different way. He tele- 

 graphed the whole petition to the American Ambassador at St. Peters- 

 burg, bidding him to lay it before the Czar and ask him if he would 

 receive such a petition if it came regularly before him. The Czar 

 politely replied that he would not. But in spite of diplomacy he had 

 received it and read it, and in this way he learned something of what 



