Taft’s instincts were correct. Pinchot had no intention of relinquishing the fight. Indeed, he was already engaged in a conspiracy to deliver the Glavis report to leading muckraking magazines. “I have been thinking this miserable business over,” Assistant Forester Overton Price had written Pinchot three days after the president’s dismissal of Glavis, “and this is the way I see the thing. . . . First, the most effective publicity possible to the Glavis side, and the Garfield side, of the case, preferably, in a special issue of a clean national magazine. . . . Second, a congressional investigation with an honest man at the head of it. . . . Third, a President discredited by the people and by the man who made him President.” Pierce promised that he would attend to all the work himself, without directly implicating Pinchot. “Don’t let them cloud the issue by laying yourself open to any charge of direct insubordination. . . . I can do a great deal without getting fired; that isn’t your job. You have got a much bigger job.”
In the weeks that followed, Overton Price and Alexander Shaw, the Forestry Bureau’s legal officer, spent many hours with Glavis, determining how best to publicize his allegations. Price and Shaw later conceded that “as employees of subordinate rank” in the Agricultural Department, they were engaged in highly “irregular” conduct. Nevertheless, they believed that by exposing the head of the Interior Department, they would forestall the “grave and immediate danger” of losing invaluable public lands. In September, Price and Shaw met for six hours with Garfield, “going over in detail” every aspect of the Glavis report. Shaw then aided Glavis to transform his bureaucratic report into an accessible and engaging publishable article. As they prepared the piece, the Forestry Bureau leaked more material to the press, stimulating further criticism of the interior secretary. Such machinations within his administration were not lost on William Taft. “Pinchot has spread a virus against Ballinger,” he told Nellie, “and has used the publicity department of his bureau for the purpose. He would deny it, but I can see traces in his talks with many newspapermen on the subject, who assume Ballinger’s guilt, and having convicted him treat any evidence showing that he is a man of strength and honesty as utterly to be disregarded.”
In late October, Glavis was introduced to Norman Hapgood, the publisher of Collier’s. Another magazine had offered $3,000 for the piece, but Glavis refused payment for work he considered a public duty. Hapgood “read the article that night and accepted it the next day,” proceeding immediately with plans for publication. No attempt was ever made to contact Ballinger or anyone within the Interior Department to verify the details or documents underlying the allegations.
Published in Collier’s on November 13, the Glavis article renewed “the newspaper frenzy” that had temporarily subsided in the aftermath of Taft’s September statement. The piece was carefully phrased throughout; Glavis later claimed he never intended to depict Ballinger as venal—he simply wanted to stop the exploitation of Alaska coal lands. Yet the headline blatantly placed Ballinger at the center of a ring of corruption. “The Whitewashing of Ballinger,” read the streamer. “Are the Guggenheims in Charge of the Department of the Interior?” Section headings within the article extended the implication: “A Leak in the Land Office,” “Ballinger Pushes Trial When Government Is Not Ready,” “The Alaska Coal Lands Are in Danger in Ballinger’s Hands.” The potential purchase of coal lands by the Morgan-Guggenheim syndicate, which was already in possession of vast copper mines, smelters, steamship lines, and railroads in the West, raised the specter that one company would control all “the natural resources of Alaska.”
With this invocation of monopoly, “the muckrake periodical press took off in full cry.” Glavis was likened to Ida Tarbell, a dogged investigator fighting to expose corruption at the highest levels. While some of the ensuing articles reflected serious research, others, as Roosevelt had warned in his celebrated rebuke of the “Muckrake Man,” simply repeated the most sensational rumors as fact. A piece by John Matthews in Hampton’s charged that Taft himself was “a party to the conspiracy.” Citing “circumstantial evidence,” Matthews concocted the tale of a deal purportedly conceived at the 1908 Republican Convention, which would allow J. P. Morgan “on behalf of the Morgan-Guggenheim combination to name the Secretary of the Interior,” with the assurance that once Ballinger was in place, “the Alaska coal grants” would be approved.
Ballinger refused to give a detailed statement in response to such distortions and outright slander. Instead, he launched a virulent attack on “literary apostles of vomit,” who “imagine they can invent calumnies and pure fabrications so rapidly as to preclude reply.” He labeled Matthews’s charges “so asinine” they did not merit a rejoinder. “I have felt so thoroughly conscious of the justice of my position,” he told the editor of the Spokesman-Review, “that I have felt assured that the public would ultimately understand the truth without the necessity of my entering upon a campaign of publicity.” Taft, too, shied from the controversy, maintaining that both Ballinger and Pinchot were committed to Roosevelt’s conservation policies, despite their divergent approaches to carrying them out.
When Ballinger released his first annual report to Congress on November 29, the chorus of outrage seemed to still. The report displayed a liberal stance on every issue, garnering widespread praise from conservationists. Even Pinchot and Garfield conceded that Ballinger had come out “in favor of all the things we fought for.” While Pinchot dismissed Ballinger’s motivation as “the goodness of a bad boy recently spanked,” he predicted that “the whole controversy will pass quietly away, with the net result that Ballinger is forced completely over on to the Conservation side,” leaving “the Administration . . . stronger for Conservation than it otherwise would have been.”
More than anyone, Taft wanted the contentious ordeal to end. Ballinger, however, saw only one route to restore his honor and reputation: a full congressional inquiry into the activities of both his department and the Forest Bureau. For months, he had silently gathered ammunition, evidence that not only vindicated his own actions but implicated Pinchot and his subordinates in manufacturing malignant attacks. Aware of Taft’s reluctance, Ballinger told the president “that the situation had become intolerable to him.” Unless Taft consented to a congressional investigation, he would resign.
Friends and family urged the president to accept Ballinger’s resignation and move on, but Taft felt compelled to defend his beleaguered cabinet official. Aware that an inquiry would prolong the struggle, overshadow his legislative program, and potentially compromise his administration, he nevertheless insisted that he would be “a coward or a white-livered skunk” if he deserted “an honest man” who had been subjected to venomous newspaper attacks. He had hoped that “the whole affair was a tempest in a teapot which soon would simmer down.” Instead, leaked information fueled sensational headlines. Faced with Ballinger’s ultimatum, the president agreed to the request for a congressional probe.
On December 23, after a series of conferences at the White House, Richard Ballinger sent a letter to Washington State’s Republican senator Wesley Jones, demanding a complete investigation into the charges leveled against him. He petitioned that “any investigation of the Interior Department should embrace the Forest Service,” as there was “reason to believe that the pernicious activity of certain of its officers has been the inspiration of these charges.” Later that day, Senator Jones introduced a resolution asking the government “to transmit to Congress any reports, statements, papers, or documents” relating to the Glavis charges and the president’s letter of exoneration. A special investigative committee, comprising six members from each House, was convened.
Pinchot’s supporters feared that “all the power of the administration” would be deployed to secure “a packed investigating committee,” groomed from the start to “glaze over the evidence against Ballinger,” punish members of the Forest Bureau for leaking government files, and discredit Pinchot “before the people.” A Washington “insider” warned Rob
ert Collier that he had acquired “secret information” suggesting that once the committee had “whitewashed” Ballinger, the interior secretary would sue Collier’s “for a million dollars on the ground of slander.” Collier called Pinchot, Garfield, Hapgood, and Henry Stimson, Garfield’s legal adviser, to an “emergency council of war” in New York. They agreed that Glavis needed an experienced lawyer to represent him at the hearing. Hapgood suggested Louis Brandeis, the prominent Boston attorney (and future Supreme Court justice). Collier’s proposed to pay the jurist $25,000 “to conduct the defense.” Brandeis readily accepted, beginning at once to pore over thousands of pages of documents.
Gifford Pinchot pursued a more public defense, delivering a speech in New York that attracted unprecedented attention. Framing his struggle with Ballinger as a battle “between special interests and equal opportunity,” the chief forester declared conservation “a moral issue,” a question of social justice. “Is it fair that thousands of families should have less than they need, in order that a few families should have swollen fortunes at their expense?” he asked. Pinchot, Taft told Horace with grave irritation, was “out again defying the lightning and the storm.” While Ballinger was “busily engaged” in the practical endeavor of “drafting laws” to protect the public lands from exploitation, Pinchot was “harassing the wealthy” and “championing the cause of the oppressed.” The outcome of this battle within the administration was undecided, however. “Will Pinchot remain the St. George and Ballinger the dragon?” Taft worriedly mused. “I don’t know. Let us see.”
IN JANUARY 1910, WITH THE congressional investigation imminent, the National Tribune reported that both “the Ballingerites and the Pinchotites” were stockpiling ammunition. The Pinchotites were initially expected “to be on the defensive,” working to deflect evidence that the Ballinger camp had gathered “to prove them as plotting against the Interior Department and as furnishing material for the muckraking magazines.” When the time came for Ballinger’s cross-examination, however, the Pinchotites were projected to gain advantage. “It will be a hot old political time,” the Tribune predicted, relishing the controversy. “It remains true today as it was in the days of [the Roman emperors],” Current Literature observed, “that a gladiatorial combat is the quickest way to ensure tremendous public interest.”
Surmising that the Ballingerites would “bring out, piece by piece, various bits of testimony” to shine “the worst possible light” on the Forest Bureau’s involvement with Glavis, Pinchot decided “to lay our hand on the table, tell in advance all the facts, and assign the exact reasons for everything that had been done.” He requested a report from Price and Shaw detailing their involvement in the release of “official information” about Ballinger and the Cunningham case. On January 5, three weeks before the hearings, he transmitted their report, along with his own commentary, to Senator Dolliver, Republican chair of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Pinchot acknowledged that Price and Shaw had violated “the rules of official decorum” but argued that “their breach of propriety” was insignificant in comparison with “the imminent danger that the Alaska coal fields still in government ownership might pass forever into private hands with little or no compensation to the public.” Appeals through official channels had failed. A final petition to the White House had been derailed by Taft’s “mistaken impression of the facts,” resulting in his decision to remove Glavis, “the most vigorous defender of the people’s interests.” Both Price and Shaw had “acted from a high and unselfish sense of public duty,” intentionally choosing “to risk their official positions rather than permit what they believed to be the wrongful loss of public property.”
Archie Butt was with Taft when news of Pinchot’s letter to Congress reached the White House. “One trouble is no sooner over in this office than another arises,” Taft declared in frustration. Though he regarded the letter “as a piece of insubordination almost unparalleled in the history of the government,” the president realized that by dismissing Pinchot, the man most pivotal in securing Roosevelt’s conservation legacy, he risked alienating Roosevelt himself. “I believe [Taft] loves Theodore Roosevelt,” Butt attested, “and a possible break with him or the possible charge of ingratitude on his part is what is writhing within him now.” Taft told Butt that no decision “had distressed him as much.” As he weighed the consequences that afternoon, he looked to Butt “like a man almost ill.” Discussing the matter with his cabinet, Taft learned that Pinchot had not cleared his letter with his boss, Agriculture Secretary James Wilson. The president sent for Senator Root, who initially warned against firing Pinchot. An examination of the correspondence, however, changed Root’s mind: “There is only one thing for you to do now, and that you must do at once,” he advised. Later that night, Taft directed Wilson to fire Pinchot, Price, and Shaw.
“The plain intimations in your letter,” Taft wrote Pinchot, “are, first, that I had reached a wrong conclusion as to the good faith of Secretary Ballinger.” Yet Pinchot “had only seen the evidence of Glavis, the accuser,” and had no knowledge of the documentary evidence submitted to the White House. “Second,” the president continued, Pinchot suggested that without public exposure, “the Administration, including the President,” would have patented “fraudulent claims” to Alaska’s rich coal lands. “I should be glad to regard what has happened only as a personal reflection, so that I could pass it over and take no official cognizance of it. But other and higher considerations must govern me.” The people “placed me in an office of the highest dignity and charged me with the duty of maintaining that dignity and proper respect for the office on the part of my subordinates. . . . By your own conduct you have destroyed your usefulness as a helpful subordinate.”
After this painful decision, Butt reported, Taft “looked refreshed and even fairly happy.” The Washington papers generally agreed that the president “could have followed no other course,” for Pinchot’s letter “was too flagrant an offense to be overlooked.” Pinchot, one editorial suggested, was “suffering from the same malady that overtook Mr. Glavis, a swollen idea of his own importance.” It seemed initially that Pinchot’s dismissal would precipitate little furor. In fact, Taft’s own message on conservation policy two weeks later garnered universal praise. “Quite as admirable a message as Mr. Pinchot could have written,” pronounced the New York World. The New York Tribune found the address “peculiarly satisfactory,” noting Taft’s “specific and practical” promotion of “new legislation to govern the disposal of the public lands.” It was evident from his tone, The Outlook agreed, that Taft remained fully committed to “the Roosevelt policies.” Furthermore, the appointment of Henry Graves to replace Pinchot clearly demonstrated Taft’s commitment to preserve the nation’s forests. Graves, the head of the Yale School of Forestry, was “a personal friend of Mr. Pinchot” and a widely respected conservationist.
Theodore Roosevelt was in the Congo when a runner brought him news of Pinchot’s dismissal. “I cannot believe it,” he wrote Pinchot. “The appointment in your place of a man of high character, a noted forestry expert, in no way, not in the very least degree, lightens the blow.” Roosevelt would refrain from any overt criticism of his successor, but he offered Pinchot his sincere support and hoped later to discuss the whole matter in detail. “I do wish that I could see you. Is there any chance of your meeting me in Europe?” Overjoyed to hear from Roosevelt, Pinchot decided to set off as soon as he had completed his testimony before Congress.
First, however, the former forester was determined to use the hearings to vindicate his actions and crush Richard Ballinger. After his dismissal, hundreds of supportive letters and telegrams arrived from across the country urging him to continue the fight. “The people have faith in you, by the million,” one telegram read. Freed from the constraints of office and all duties as a subordinate, Pinchot became “general-in-command of the anti-Ballinger forces.” Together with Garfield and Collier, he spent hours with Louis Brandeis, helping to prepare
Glavis for the witness stand and reading through the mass of material provided by the administration for documents that would buttress their case. Glavis handled himself well on the stand. The National Tribune reported that he had presented his case “in the most convincing way.” For those anticipating fireworks, however, the early phase of the inquiry proved “a keen disappointment.” In the absence of hard evidence of corruption on Ballinger’s part, the investigation seemed to show “the existence of a quarrel rather than a scandal.”
Public interest in the hearings heightened when Gifford Pinchot took the stand. He “opened with a heavy volley,” flatly charging that Ballinger had “been unfaithful to his trust, disloyal to the President and an intentional enemy to the conservation policy.” Had the interior secretary not been checked by “the public clamor against him,” invaluable public lands would have been lost forever to the special interests. “The imperative duty before this country,” Pinchot declared, “is to get rid of an unfaithful public servant.” After this impressive start, however, he failed to substantiate his dramatic charges. Taft was relieved. “Pinchot has distinctly discredited himself by his thundering,” he told Horace, “and then falling down altogether in respect to his specifications.” Horace agreed that Pinchot had “proven nothing at all.”