of his sharpness. Mr. Roosevelt likes a man who wastes no time explaining why he can not do a thing, but does it; who, if he lacks the most suitable tools, seizes those which lie nearest his hand and goes to work. Such a man he seems to have found in Leslie M. Shaw, thanks to an instinct which guided him straight when elaborate reasoning would probably have led him in another direction.

This

Charles Emory Smith was succeeded as Postmaster-General by Henry C. Payne. appointment occasioned the most wide-spread surprise. Mr. Roosevelt had a reputation throughout the world as a political reformer; Mr. Payne had a reputation throughout the country as a dyed-in-the-wool politician, with a politician's traditional contempt for reform. What could two such men have in common?

It was because of something which they did not have in common that Mr. Payne was chosen. Mr. Roosevelt, self-confident in most situations, always harbored a feeling of ignorance and helplessness about politics in the narrower sense; and when Mr. Smith announced his purpose to retire the President decided that now was the time to bring into the Cabinet an element it utterly lacked. There was not a single

THE CABINET POLITICIAN

practical politician in the group. This was not surprising in view of the fact that Mr. McKinley, who had called it together, was himself by far the ablest politician in the United States, and needed no aid in the line of his own specialty. Mr. Payne, who had a great name as a party manager and was understood to have a wonderful grasp of detail, was accordingly summoned to the vacant place. He was chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee, and it was expected that his counsels at the Cabinet table would turn the scale on mooted points of policy where the arguments pro and con seemed evenly balanced. The question would then be reduced to: "Other considerations being equal, what would be the expedient course to take?" And Mr. Payne's advice would settle it.

But the plans of Presidents are no surer of execution than those of other men. Mr. Roosevelt must soon have awakened to two truths which many of his friends had already tried in vain to impress upon him: first, that it requires a different class of talents to handle the petty politics within a party and to handle the larger politics of a whole nation; and, second, that, in view of his unparalleled personal popu

larity, he could beat the professional politicians at their own game, two to one.

Mr. Payne had been all his life a party manager, but not a popular leader. The subordinates in his own party organization to whom he issued an order knew that they must obey it without pausing to ask questions. If he favored seating one set of delegates and rejecting another set who were knocking at a convention's doors, and he was able to sway the decision, that was the end of the matter. The result might excite some dissatisfaction within the party, or give a certain faction an advantage in the next primaries, but that did not mean necessarily a change of party fortunes at the polls. When he came into the Cabinet, however, a wider vista of possible consequences opened before every one of his official acts. Any policy he mapped out would affect not merely his party subordinates or a party faction but the whole American people, comprising all parties and all factions.

One of the first problems which presented itself to Mr. Payne was the Indianola outrage. The post-office at Indianola, Miss., had been presided over for some years, and with entire acceptability as far as known, by Mrs. Minnie

INDIANOLA INCIDENT

Cox, a colored woman of good repute. A revival of race proscription which broke out in the winter of 1901-02 caused a mob to collect and threaten Mrs. Cox with violence unless she resigned her office. She was not conscious of any offense, but through fear sent her resignation to Washington and with her family fled from the town.

All Mr. Payne's combativeness came to the surface at once. He was not only indignant at the poor woman's treatment, but he recognized the dramatic features of the situation. He was ready to proceed to any lengths in reasserting the majesty of the Federal Government. Had he been President, we should undoubtedly have seen Mrs. Cox drawn from her place of refuge and sent back to Indianola under a military escort, and a cordon of troops around the postoffice would have protected its occupants and its business from further molestation till the excitement had died down.

He was not President, however. The man who was felt not a whit less indignant, but manifested his sentiment in a way that, without any sacrifice of impressiveness, saved the dignity of the Government and raised no constitutional issues. He simply closed the post-office, and

allowed the citizens of Indianola to pay for their folly by going five miles to the next office for their mail. The punishment fitted the crime to a dot: a community which had relapsed into barbarism had no longer any claim upon the luxuries that accompany modern civilization. No armed force was sent to compel it to be decent against its will; a privilege it had enjoyed while decent simply dropped out when it surrendered its self-respect.

The next problem which came before Mr. Payne was the cleansing of his own executive household. I refer to the investigation of the scandals in the postal service which kept the American people under a stress of mingled curiosity and disgust for the better part of the year 1903.

It is but just to say at the outset that Mr. Payne has borne in this matter a great deal of blame which he does not deserve. When the charges of fraud were first brought to his notice he carried them to the President and announced his purpose of investigating them and punishing any wrongdoing he discovered. The only point on which the President and he appear to have disagreed in judgment was the method of proceeding, and here is where the essential dif