IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR 67 
go out in midwinter for want of coal had nothing but praise for this 
salutary interference. 
When the Republic 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 
