The Writings of Carl Schurz/To Edward Atkinson, July 31st, 1905

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Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz and others, edited by Frederic Bancroft

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New York City: G. P. Putnam's Sons, pages 430–431

3595876Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz — To Edward Atkinson, July 31stCarl Schurz and others

TO EDWARD ATKINSON

Bolton Landing, July 31, 1905.

Your letter was a most agreeable surprise to me after so long a time of suspended communication. More agreeable than all else is the assurance it gives me that you are steadily at work and like it. I too am regularly active, writing my memoirs, but I am not sure that I like work as much as I did in younger years. Still I keep at it and have to be satisfied with that.

I do not know whether “the tide has turned on protectionism.” That there is a widespread desire for the reduction of tariff rates, is undoubtedly true. That this desire is likely to increase in strength is also true. But it will have to grow much stronger if it is to break the dominant power of protectionism in the Republican party or the adherence of the masses to that party. Roosevelt might have done, and might still do, much toward that end, if he had the moral courage to take the protection bull by the horns. But that courage, it seems, he does not possess. There are two things he has, I believe, really at heart: to build up a very strong Navy, and to keep the power of the Republican party intact. To these two objects, I apprehend, he is inclined to sacrifice everything else. And his personal popularity is immense, and likely to remain so unless he makes some very outrageous mistake. Ordinary mistakes will hurt him little, for he is one of the lucky persons who have captured the popular imagination to such an extent that the people will forgive them almost everything.

The “moral wave” that is now sweeping over the country may do much good; but it is still doubtful whether it will open the popular mind to the fact that protectionism is a more prolific breeder of corruption than anything else.

Whether I shall be able to open the next season of the Massachusetts Reform Club, I cannot now say. I have pretty much given up public speaking, partly for physical reasons. I am very much disinclined to make promises reaching far ahead, for it is too uncertain whether I shall be able to redeem them at the appointed time.

I heartily wish you a pleasant journey in Europe and that it may do you good, and I hope that after your return we may soon meet once more.