The delegates looked with “breathless interest” to Richard Ballinger’s response to both the newspaper charges and Pinchot’s speech. When the interior secretary stood at the podium the next day, he merely read a “routine dissertation on public-land matters,” as if “the conflict” with Pinchot and the furor over his policies “had never been born.” Furthermore, he declined to remain for questions after his prepared remarks, as every other speaker had done. “He picked up his hat,” one reporter noted, “hustled into a waiting automobile, and hurried to his hotel.” Former California governor George Pardee openly denounced Ballinger’s decision to flee. “I have been in public office and have been criticized,” Pardee derisively observed. “I do not object to it. A public official should be willing to be criticized. An agent of the people of this country should be called to account.” Raucous cheers broke out in the hall along with rhythmic shouts of “Hit ’em again.”
The United Press reporter who broke the story pressed Ballinger for an interview at his hotel. Refusing to “grant an audience,” Ballinger finally agreed to talk by phone. “The dope you put out is all wrong and false,” he began. When the reporter claimed to have records and maps substantiating the charges, Ballinger grew testy. “I’ll have no conference with you,” he responded, terminating the call. When another reporter “questioned and quizzed” the secretary about his actions, Ballinger became equally truculent. “See here. You don’t understand this thing,” he bellowed. “You are hindering the development of the West.”
“Mr. Ballinger’s silence is not reassuring,” the San Francisco Call editorialized. “The country wants to know whether Ballinger is secretly fighting the policy of conservation.” When Ballinger eventually put out a statement, he simply repeated that his decisions were fully warranted and his actions unreasonably maligned. “Gross misrepresentations have been sent out,” he declared. “Criticisms have been pretty severe from some quarters, but knowing that I am absolutely right in the position I have taken, I have paid no attention to them. In time it will be shown beyond a doubt that my course has been absolutely right.” In both his private and public life, Ballinger maintained, he had “always believed” in the tenet of “nonpublicity,” confident that his actions would be vindicated “by the results accomplished.”
Ballinger was, in fact, eventually able to prove that the Montana land grab story was riddled with error from start to finish. Only four tracts of 40 acres each were actually involved in the restoration, a total of 158.63 acres. Reporting the figure of 15,863 acres, the correspondent had misplaced the decimal point. Moreover, detailed surveys revealed that not a single valuable water site was contained in the restored land. Two of the tracts “did not touch the river at all,” the third “touched the river only in its extreme corner,” and the fourth had never been included in the Garfield withdrawals. Finally, not one of these entries had moved to actual patent. Pinchot eventually acknowledged that he had been mistaken when he charged that “monopolists had grabbed off” valuable waterpower sites in Montana. By then Ballinger had lost the public battle; the impression that he had betrayed Roosevelt’s conservation policies was widespread. The controversy between Pinchot and Ballinger had “assumed a certain symbolic importance,” with the chief forester advocating for the public and the interior secretary representing the corporations.
THE DISPUTE OVER WATERPOWER WAS soon “completely overshadowed” by dramatic developments in what was called the Cunningham coal scandal. Pinchot brought such grave allegations against the interior secretary that it was “taken for granted” that “either one side or the other must make good,” leaving the other in abject humiliation. Capturing headlines for months, the scandal and ensuing congressional investigation would eventually become “the driving wedge,” which “slowly but surely” created an unbridgeable “chasm” between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.
Details of the coal case, “a slumbering volcano” in the Interior Department over the previous three years, first became public at the same Spokane conference that escalated the waterpower story. Louis R. Glavis, a twenty-seven-year-old field investigator for the General Land Office in the Interior Department, had approached Pinchot in desperation, fearing that the department, under pressure from Ballinger, was on the verge of handing over 5,000 acres of potentially rich coal land to a syndicate headed by a Seattle developer, Clarence Cunningham.
As the special agent assigned to investigate the validity of land claims in Alaska, Glavis had gradually accumulated evidence suggesting that Cunningham, acting as the agent for a group of wealthy clients, had acted illegally when he staked his thirty-three claims. The Alaska land laws, designed to protect small farmers and prevent monopoly, limited each individual to 160 acres. Individual settlers, who paid small fees for the land, were required to prove they were acting “in good faith,” on their own behalf, when they staked claims for land. From the outset, Glavis believed, the Cunningham group had agreed to consolidate their claims “into one property,” which would be “operated for the joint benefit of all.” Indeed, he had uncovered a document proposing to give a Morgan-Guggenheim Company half the stock in return for $250,000 in cash investments to develop the coal property. Before completing his investigation, however, Glavis had been pulled from the case. Upon learning that the Land Office had scheduled a hearing on the Cunningham claims, half of which lay within the Chugach National Forest, he had turned to the chief forester for help.
Most troubling of all, Glavis reported, Ballinger had been “closely identified” with the members of the Cunningham group at various stages of the claims process. When Ballinger was land commissioner, he had shared all departmental correspondence on the case with Cunningham and had, at one point, actually ordered the claims to patent, pulling back only after an urgent telegram from Glavis. Then, in the summer of 1908, after leaving his post as land commissioner and returning home to Seattle, Ballinger had met with members of the Cunningham group, who had retained him as their “legal representative” before the government. Ballinger’s actions, Glavis continued, flouted a three-decades-old ruling that no government employee could “act as counsel, attorney, or agent for prosecuting any claim against the government” within two years of leaving employment. Finally, when Ballinger returned to public service as interior secretary, he had urged the department to decide the Cunningham claims without further delay.
After hearing Glavis’s account, Pinchot dispatched an urgent letter to Taft. “I advised him to lay the whole matter before you without delay,” he told the president. Immediate action was in order, Pinchot warned, because “many persons” already knew of “various parts” of the story and it would soon become “impossible to prevent its becoming public.” Before Glavis even reached the “Summer Capital” in Beverly, in fact, sensational articles began to appear. “Ballinger Mixed in Alaska Frauds,” headlined the Salt Lake Tribune. The fact that Ballinger had accepted fees from Cunningham during the year between his service as land commissioner and his return to Washington as secretary drew particular attention. Glavis reportedly had “a whole trunk full of documentary evidence” that would lead to the indictment of Ballinger and several other high officials in the Interior Department. It was later revealed that the publicity wing in the Forestry Bureau had leaked these reports.
When Glavis met with the president on August 18, he handed him a detailed statement on the coal case and his allegations against Ballinger. The following day, Taft discussed the charges with Attorney General George Wickersham, who was vacationing nearby. Wickersham reviewed the Glavis statement and “made notes upon his reading.” The two men talked again the following afternoon and determined that Taft should forward the Glavis report to Ballinger and request a written reply. The president instructed Ballinger to answer each of the charges, “especially concerning [his] relation as counsel to the persons interested in the Cunningham coal claims.” Taft “quite distinctly” recalled that Ballinger had told him the previous year that because of his “
professional relation” with the Cunningham group, he had turned the case over to Assistant Secretary Frank Pierce; beyond that, he remembered little else about the situation. He would appreciate a written explanation “as full as possible.” Taft also requested written statements from Frank Pierce and the chief of Field Service, H. H. Schwartz, under whom Glavis had worked.
The Interior Department officials responded quickly, providing a vigorous defense of Ballinger. Pierce insisted that Ballinger “has had nothing to do with these Cunningham cases since he became Secretary,” adding that any “blame or criticism . . . should fall upon [him] and not upon the Secretary.” Schwartz asserted that Glavis’s decision to seek help from the Forestry Department was utterly unnecessary: at that juncture no one in the Interior Department was suggesting “issuance of patents, but only expedition of hearings.” And based on the evidence already accumulated, the hearings would likely have resulted in an adverse decision to the claimants.
Meanwhile, Ballinger continued to toil over his own response. Asked about the allegations by the press, he remarked only that he intended “to kill some snakes.” On September 4, he completed his 10,000-word document, taking up each one of the Glavis charges in turn. Before becoming land commissioner, Ballinger testified, he had no personal knowledge of the Cunningham claims, though as a twenty-year resident of Seattle he had developed friendships and acquaintances with a number of the claimants. He acknowledged that at one point he had clear-listed the claims, based upon a favorable report from another special agent. Upon receiving Glavis’s telegram, however, he had acted immediately to stop the patents. The patents were still being held up when he left the land commissionership.
Ballinger did concede that in the summer of 1908, Cunningham had come to his house simply to complain of his treatment by Glavis. Cunningham told Ballinger that at one of his meetings with Glavis, he had allowed the agent to read a journal documenting each stage of the claims process. He claimed that Glavis had stolen one of the pages, which he was using out of context to demonstrate an illegal intent to consolidate. Cunningham argued that Glavis had interpreted the document incorrectly. When Cunningham learned that Ballinger would soon travel east, he asked him to carry an affidavit to Interior Secretary Garfield presenting his point of view. Ballinger gave the affidavit to Garfield, but the secretary told him that the claims would never be upheld unless the group was willing to apply under a recent law that forgave early signs of consolidation but severely limited the amount of money that could be raised to develop the property. Ballinger advised Cunningham accordingly. For his services and traveling expenses, Ballinger reported, he received $250. Since he had never been retained as a “legal representative,” he argued, there had been no violation of the long-standing rule which, at any rate, applied only to monetary claims against the government. Furthermore, he labeled the charge that he had furnished Cunningham with departmental correspondence relating to the case a pure fabrication.
On Labor Day, September 6, Ballinger hand-delivered his written statement to Beverly, along with “several satchels full of documents.” Oscar Lawler, the assistant attorney general assigned to the Interior Department, accompanied him. They joined the president for lunch at the Myopia Hunt Club, where Taft was scheduled to present victory cups for the annual horse show before a crowd of 5,000. That evening, Ballinger and Lawler conferred with the president for several hours. Taft later reported that he stayed up until three o’clock, “reading the answers and exhibits.” When he reconvened with Ballinger and Lawler the following evening, the president had already determined that the Glavis report contained no hard evidence that Ballinger was dishonest, disloyal, or incompetent. “The cruel injustice which has been done to [Ballinger] makes me indignant,” Taft declared. He told Lawler that he “was very anxious to write a full statement of the case,” explaining his reasoning to the public. But because he was scheduled to leave in one week for his two-month tour around the country and still had a half-dozen speeches to write, he asked Lawler to prepare a draft statement “as if he were president.”
The following Sunday, Wickersham and Lawler returned to Beverly with Lawler’s draft. Taft asked Wickersham to spend the rest of the day reviewing the entire record. He continued to work on his own statement, using Lawler’s draft as a starting point. After a second reading, Wickersham told Taft that he saw nothing in the record to incriminate Ballinger. Finding Wickersham “in substantial accord” with his own views, Taft completed his own statement and directed the attorney general to embody his notes and oral statement in a written analysis, to be filed with the documents. He should date the analysis prior to the publication of the president’s statement, Taft continued, to demonstrate that his decision had been buttressed by the attorney general’s “summary of the evidence and his conclusions.”
Taft issued his statement on September 13, in the form of an official letter to Ballinger, which he furnished to the press as he boarded the train to begin his 13,000-mile journey. Having examined the documents, Taft wrote, he had concluded that the Glavis charges embraced “only shreds of suspicion without any substantial evidence to sustain his attack.” Though he believed that “Glavis was honestly convinced of the illegal character of the claims in the Cunningham group, and that he was seeking evidence to defeat the claims,” the record revealed an inordinate delay on his part. The claimants were entitled to a speedy hearing, which was all the Interior Department had requested. As for the charges against Ballinger himself, it was clear that since becoming secretary, he had “studiously declined to have any connection whatever with the Cunningham claims.” Glavis was aware of this fact, Taft charged, along with several other pieces of exculpatory evidence, but “in his zeal to convict,” he had not provided “the benefit of information” that might place the suspect transactions in a different and more favorable context. A subordinate who believes “his chief is dishonest,” Taft asserted, has a responsibility “to submit that evidence to higher authority”; an employee who levels charges founded only on “suspicions” and “fails to give to his chief the benefit of circumstances within his knowledge that would explain his chief’s action as on proper grounds,” however, can no longer be trusted. He therefore granted Ballinger’s request for “authority to discharge Mr. Glavis” for disloyalty to his superior officers in “making false charges against them.”
By his own standards of jurisprudence, the president’s precipitous decision to declare Ballinger innocent and Glavis guilty was seriously flawed. Taft had provided Glavis no chance to respond to Ballinger’s countercharges, or even to see the documents upon which they were based. He had judged Glavis guilty of “misrepresentation,” “suppression,” and “culpable delay,” without “an opportunity to be heard in his own defense.” The president of the United States had questioned the young investigator’s integrity, condemned his character, and broadcast his severance from public service to the nation at large.
The press greeted the president’s statement as a victory for Ballinger and a defeat for Pinchot, who had pushed Glavis forward. “The Ballinger adherents threw their hats in the air and shouted that it is all over,” the New York Tribune reported. “The Pinchot camp remained grimly silent and muttered threats in strict confidence.” Correspondents speculated that Pinchot’s resignation was imminent. Yet the chief forester’s departure was the last thing Taft wanted. He fully understood that the public would interpret Pinchot’s exit as evidence of the administration’s opposition to Roosevelt’s conservation policies.
To forestall “hasty action” on Gifford Pinchot’s part, Taft wrote him a warm, personal letter. “My Dear Gifford,” he began, “I write this to urge upon you that you do not make Glavis’ cause yours.” His decision to uphold Ballinger and discharge Glavis, he explained, was reached only after a careful study of documents Pinchot had never seen and carried no adverse judgment on his chief forester; on the contrary, “I have the utmost confidence in your conscientious desire to serve the Government and the public,”
and “I should consider it one of the greatest losses that my administration could sustain if you were to leave it.” When a public servant had been so “unjustly treated,” as Ballinger, he wrote, “it is my duty as his chief, with the knowledge I have of his official integrity and his lack of culpability, to declare it to the public.” In the name of “teamwork,” he hoped Pinchot and the members of the Forestry Bureau would refrain from further public argument with the Interior Department. “It is most demoralizing,” the president concluded, “and subversive of governmental discipline.”
After several conferences with Taft, Pinchot agreed to remain at his post. The president, in turn, promised to issue a statement of support for Pinchot to counter the reigning impression that “in holding Ballinger up,” he was condemning his chief forester. “Never at any time,” Taft said, had he “intended to reflect upon Mr. Pinchot.” He also authorized publication of an excerpt from his personal letter, in which he assured the forester that he would deem his resignation “one of the greatest losses” his administration could endure. Pleased that a temporary truce had been established, Taft was nevertheless apprehensive, certain that Pinchot remained “as fanatical” as ever “in his chase after Ballinger.” He feared Pinchot had reached “a state of mind” that would “lead to a break” at some point. “He is looking for martyrdom,” Taft told Wickersham, “and it may be necessary to give it to him; but I prefer to let him use all the rope that he will.”