Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/148

112 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS tary of the Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock; Sec retary of Agriculture, James Wilson; Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Victor H. Metcalf . Charles W. Fairbanks was Vice-President. The first change occurred in four months, when Charles J. Bonaparte succeeded Paul Morton as Secretary of the Navy. No fair account of Mr. Roosevelt s character and public services could fail to be a eulogy such as but two out of his twenty-four predecessors have de served. Washington and Lincoln are benefactors with whom he is to be classed without being com pared. But no fair account of Mr. Roosevelt should fail to allude to some of those public mistakes into which impulse has led him more than once. Paul Morton was a personal friend. Mr. Roose velt had seen something of him while on a western journey, and knew him to be endowed with good business powers. Needing a capable Secretary of the Navy, he invited him to take this portfolio; and no doubt Mr. Morton could have made an ad mirable Secretary. But how should a man directly involved in railroad transactions, to prohibit which Mr. Roosevelt was at that moment doing his ut most to have special laws enacted, be with any pro priety a member of the cabinet? Unfavorable comment was here justified, and thus the change was made. This sort of mistake, sometimes grave, sometimes not important, has always been for-