Background: Socially distinguished, a confidant of presidents, and a veteran Washington reporter, De Benneville Randolph Keim was, literally and figuratively, perfectly positioned to record the assassination of William McKinley at the Pan American Exposition on September 6, 1901, in Buffalo, New York. These are his notes.

At Buffalo, N.Y.,
Sept. 7. 1901

By De B. Randolph Keim

“Hearing the cheers of the vast throng of people who were awaiting the arrival of the President at the exposition grounds, I sauntered across the esplanade to view the enthusiastic demonstrations which were being made as the procession passed along the western drive of the esplanade in a southerly direction from the railroad gate. The Presidential party arrived at the Music Temple about three minutes past 4 o’clock, entering the northeast doorway of the Temple of Music. About five minutes later those who had passed before the President began to emerge from the opposite door. I entered the southwest door to witness the form and arrangements for handling such an immense crowd, having been familiar with the long-established custom at the Executive Mansion in Washington. I was in a position to have a full view what was taking place.

I was especially attracted by the curved aisle extending diagonally moved across the floor of the building, the covered [illegible] settees having blue cambric hanging down their backs to make a lane or aisle so that no one could stop. I saw that many of the Park police were stationed along this lane to hasten people out.

(I have made a drawing plan of the building of this arrangement to show to those interested.) I was looking directly at the party and noticed Secretary Cortelyou at the rear and back of the receiving party, and who was moving from place to place evidently uneasy.  Seemingly, thinking a change of form was necessary.

Suddenly hearing two quick, sharp reports, and seeing smoke, I feared that something serious had happened. I saw the President fall back (not fall over) and was apparently caught by two persons one on each side. I think Mr. Cortelyou was one. I am not sure about the second one. On the impulse of the moment I rushed forward. In an instant the park guard, stationed along the passageway, seemingly about twenty five feet apart, shouted: “The President is shot! Put everybody out!” Close the doors! Realizing what had happened, and, observing Secretary Cortelyou and Mr. Millburn and George Foster, of the Secret Service, in attendance, with others, assisting the President, I broke through the improvised diagonal aisle [illegible], across the building, and hastily turned around and arranged a settee for the President to rest upon. (as shown in picture.) 

“The President was led forward, along the aisle toward the center of the building walking with great composure, supported by Secretary Cortelyou and Mr. Foster. As he approached the settee, I assisted in placing him upon it. The President sat down with entire self-possession. I began fanning him with my straw hat. Others then began to gather and also fanned him. The President was but slightly pale, and showed no little if any signs whatever of nervousness.

At this moment the Coast guards and Secret Service men rushed by, carrying the would-be assassin hanging limp in their grasp to the outer entrance to await the patrol wagon. I have since learnt that they took him to a room adjoining the stage.

“The white vest which the President wore had been unbuttoned as well as his shirt front evidently by someone before he was led from the receiving party and showed plainly the powder marks and the bullet hole. A little blood had accumulated which attracted the President’s eye. It seemed to worry him, somewhat. Secretary Cortelyou, who had now left for a moment to make arrangements for the President’s removal, returned. He asked the President: ‘Have you much pain?’ The President replied, ‘No,’ turning his head toward the place he had just left and where he had been receiving. Secretary Cortelyou then departed for a moment second time, and upon returning the President remarked: ‘Let no exaggerated reports reach Mrs. McKinley.’ (This is exactly as given, all other reports are incorrect.) This he repeated frequently, while Secretary Cortelyou assured him that his wishes would be carried out. In the meantime, occupying a seat on the settee near the President, I kept fanning him so that he might have plenty of fresh air, as did others some five or six in number who had gathered.

“Secretary Cortelyou again departed but reappeared when the stretcher arrived with the hospital aids. This was not more than five eight minutes after the atrocious deed had been committed and seemed a remarkably quick response to the call, as not more than five minutes has elapsed. Secretary Cortelyou, and I think George Foster, and myself, with the aid of others, assisted the President, who showed the same self-control as all through the terrible ordeal, to the stre[t]cher. He was covered with a blanket by the hospital attendants and willing hands bore him along the aisle to the ambulance, which was waiting at the outer or southwest door. I carried the upper left hand corner, and, having picked up the President’s hat from the settee, where he had placed it, and would evidently have been left, I shielded his face from public gaze as we emerged into the light. As we reached the exterior of the building moans and sobs were distinctly heard from the crowd which had gathered and were held back by the police.

“After the President had been comfortably adjusted in the electric ambulance Secretary Cortelyou desired to ride on the front seat with the driver, but the later objected, not knowing who Mr. Cortelyou was and pushed Mr. Cortelyou off. I said to him (the driver): ‘This is the President’s secretary and must go!’ where upon I pushed Mr. Cortelyou on just as the taller of the attending doctors got up to his seat on the other side evidently because he had not left his seat. This I think now, is the chief service I rendered, for if the ambulance had hurried off Mr. Cortelyou might not have reached the hospital as soon as he did and taken such control of the situation. As the ambulance started, finding no guard on the rear step, I jumped on myself to prevent the door from flying open. There were two hospital attendants on the box with Mr. Cortelyou, and the other riding inside with George Foster. The only government officials accompanying the ambulance were Secretary Cortelyou and myself unless Mr. Foster could be called one.

“The mounted police, numbering about fifteen, instantly closed in on the rear, and a rapid space was made through the esplanade to the exposition hospital, going north along the west side of the Court of Honor, upon the concrete, and then turned west near the main or west Amherst gate entrance. The smooth concrete payvments [pavement] and the rubber tires ground vibration to a minimum. Many people whom we passed had evidently, as yet, no knowledge of what had transpired within the building. Upon halting at the hospital entrance, Secretary Cortelyou was, I think, the first to alight. In the meantime I opened the rear doors, assisted by the young doctor from within, the ambulance and George Foster and the attendants from inside, having been joined by others, the President was borne into the room on the right od (sic) the hall, with ample sunlight, and equipped with the most modern surgical appliances. Shortly several surgeons and physicians arrived. Many others on the outside, in vain sought admittance. I think the accompanying doctors told Mr. Cortelyou who was in charge of the Hospital and which city surgeons were of pronounced ability, for very shortly Dr. Mann came in. One or two others came in and I think Dr. Mynter were accepted. 

“In about fifteen minutes, the time being about 4:45 p.m., Dr. Mann arrived. A hurried examination of the President’s wound was made, followed by a consultation in the hall, at which an immediate operation was determined upon. Dr. Mann, who came out into the hall told Mr. Cortelyou (in my hearing),“I think we better operate at once” (these are the very words used), to which Secretary Cortelyou assented.

Dr. Park came when the operation had progressed about 20 minutes and Dr. Mann explained what he had determined upon and done thus far. 

While the doctors were washing up preparatory to the trying operation several telegrams were handed in the side or rear windows and I saw the maid take them asking for Mr. Cortelyou, “who is Mr. Cortelyou?” &c. I seized them and hurriedly went to Mr. Cortelyou, who, after reading them said to me “I’ll not answer any of them now.”

“In the meantime, at Secretary Cortelyou’s request, I stationed myself at one of the doors of the operating room, with George Foster at the other, with instructions not to permit any undesirable persons to pass. Shortly Mr. Foster retired leaving me the only doorkeeper. In the meantime, by the rear entrance to the hospital, several physicians had entered and were pressing their claims. This entrance was quickly barred and several policemen were stationed there with instructions which I gave.

During these moments of waiting, the President, while resting on the operating table was heard to say: “Thy will be done; thy kingdom come". evidently a sentence from the Lord’s prayer, and was, I thought, his prayer at the moment. Other broken words followed. I believe he also said: “God forgive him - he little knew what he was doing.”

During the operation Secretary Cortelyou was in and out of the room observing the progress of the operation receiving numerous telegrams from all parts of the world and answering urgent calls at the main entrance. Throughout he was as cool and collected as if in the ordinary transaction of business in his office at Washington. His coolness under the terrible strain of the situation was the admiration of all. It allayed undue haste or excitement, and at the same time no moments were lost in indecision. It was undoubtedly due to his extraordinary presence of mind that the President’s sufferings were reduced to a minimum, and that the way to recovery was opened.

The operating room was most wonderfully provided with modern appliances, and very timely there was scarcely anything lacking: the glass water jars [interpolation illegible], the glass side boards, the excellent planned two west windows letting in the warm setting sun, light and ventilation, the glass trays with instruments lying in solution of antiseptics, the many kinds of antiseptic bandages, the nurses constantly flying in and out bringing what was required without noise and seemingly without instructions all went to show the thoroughness with which this hospital was fitted.

Before the operation George Foster showed the first or stray bullet, and I wondered as I examined it, how so little a wound missel [missile] could do so much harm as it seemed to have done. It was an ordinary 32 calibre lead bullet uninjured.

As darkness drew on the doctors called for more light. So the over head electric cluster was turned on, later they asked for a movable light. One was produced and I handed it to Dr. Rixey who held it in as required by the surgeons. As the President’s clothes were removed before the operation by the regular attendants, Mr. Foster took charge of them and carried them to the front office, where they were locked up. In the meantime, I had charge of the President’s hat, but soon afterwords placed it with the other articles under Mr. Foster’s care.

At the close of the operation Dr. Parker said “Gentlemen before we depart I want to say one thing – let nothing that has been seen or heard in this room be repeated.” At 7:15 P.M. the President was returned to the electric ambulance assisted by the same willing hands and in about the same order and slowly conveyed by way of the Lincoln Park gate to the Milburn house. As the sad procession was about to leave the grounds, the evening illumination all over the building and grounds began to appear slowly at first, but in about thirty seconds and before they were turned on full head, however, the lights were turned off, leaving the exposition in utter darkness. A very appropriate mark of respect. This was very remarkable for it happened just about the Lincoln gate.

As others were leaving the hospital, I was tendered a seat in the carriage of Mr. Goodrich, one of the directors of the exposition who had with him his daughter, and later we were found by Dr. Mynter. We reached the residence immediately after Dr. Rixey and the nurses, having passed the ambulance just outside of the Lincoln gate. The President was very quickly and quietly borne into the mansion and up the stairway to the apartment which had been prepared for him.

Just before the party reached the Milburn house steps some hesitancy was apparent which end should go up first. Dr. Mann said the head last so it was done. I soon saw that height was needed at the rear or head so assisted them on up the winding stairs around a dangerous turn to the rear bed room where the President was carefully placed in bed. The stretcher as it was removed from the patient showed clearly the blood stains from the operation, having been used from the first till the last this moment. In about five minutes all the arrangements had been carried out and the President was resting comfortably as could be expected. I assisted in arranging some furniture that was crowding the room and at the same time I cleared the windows so that more air could enter.

In doing this I was the last to leave the room, Dr. Mann leaving but a few moments before. The two hospital nurses were in the room when we entered and were most attentive, and together with myself were the only persons there when Dr. Rixey reappeared and for the first time seemed to take charge. The President, but a few moments before, seemed to be coming out from under the influence of ether and was moaning continually, and evidently being in much pain. He talked and said many broken words which seemed to connect with those expressed by him before going under the influence of the ether. 

The surgeons, ambulance corps and friends who had assisted through these trying scenes now departed one by one, leaving Secretary Cortelyou, the medical staff, the stewards of the ambulance and stenographers from the White House who were there to care for the nation’s sufferer.

This was, I judge, about 8 o’clock, and. The quiet, sad but cool evening I shall never forget. I bade Mr. Cortelyou goodnight having asked him if there was anything more I could do. I was the last of the assistants to leave and regretted that I could do nothing more for the President we all loved so much.

Transcribed from: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Honolulu, July 14, 1904

 That is the road George Bruce Cortelyou traveled. Ten years ago, and that is a mighty short time Cortelyou was stenographer and confidential man to Fourth Assistant Postmaster General Maxwell at Washington. When Maxwell came into the office he found Cortelyou there. Maxwell was a Democrat, and a Democrat who believes that to the victors belong the spoils. Cortelyou was a Republican, and expected to be fired that is, to be transferred back to a mere clerkship, as he was under the protection of the civil service rules. In fact, he had arranged his transfer, and Maxwell had picked out the Democrat he intended putting in Cortelyou's place. It chanced that this Democrat was not then in Washington and could not get there for a couple of weeks. So, Cortelyou worked on with Maxwell. Before the fortnight was over Maxwell turned to Cortelyou one day and said: "Would you like to stay here with me indefinitely?" "Of course I would." "Well, you stay. The fact is, Cortelyou, I don't know how I could get along without you." And Cortelyou stayed.

As the months rolled by Maxwell was so much delighted with the quiet, skillful, rapid work of his secretary that he fell into the habit of boasting about the department that he had the best stenographer in the shop. He cracked up Cortelyou to his brother officials and to Bissel, the Postmaster General. Finally, Bissell tried to get Cortelyou into his own office, but Maxwell raised such a row about it that he was forced to drop the idea.

One day, hot long afterward, Bissell was at the White House. Cleveland remarked that he needed another stenographer and that he wanted a good one. Could Bissell help him out? The fat Postmaster General laughed. Mr. Cleveland asked him what he was laughing about. "Why," said Bissell, "I was just thinking what a good joke it would be on Maxwell. He has a stenographer he's always bragging about - says he's the best in Washington and won't let anybody take him away. Of course, Mr. President, if you wanted this man "What's his name?" "Cortelyou." "Send him down to the White House and Bissell went away, smiling over the joke he had played on Maxwell.

When Cortelyou started in at the White House it was as a stenographer to President Cleveland. He wrote the President's letters. After a day or two Cortelyou thought it best to offer a little explanation to the man whose confidential work he was doing, and so he said: Mr. President, perhaps you think I am a Democrat, but I think it no more than right I should tell you I am a Republican.”  “I don’t care a damn what your politics are," replied Mr. Cleveland, "as long as you do your work well and are loyal to your chief."

About 1882, when he was a slender stripling of 19, George Cortelyou was a student in the New England Conservatory of Music. It was his ambition to be a musician. President Chester A. Arthur visited Boston about that time, and young Cortelyou had such an admiration for Arthur that he was one of the crowd that met the President at the railway station. His enthusiasm got the better of him and led him to run through the streets by the side of the President's carriage through the commons and down Washington street to the hotel. In the carriage with President Arthur was his secretary, Mr. Phillips, and young Cortelyou racing along besides the wheels, looked up admiringly at Phillips, and said to himself: "How I would like to be the secretary to a President of the United States and ride about with him in a carriage!"

Cortelyou was such a good stenographer and a man so zealous and trustworthy in all his work, that President Cleveland kept him and liked him. When McKinley came in Cortelyou was there, and became assistant to Secretary Porter. He was the best stenographer and man of business on the White House staff, and when Porter's health broke down it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be promoted to the secretaryship. Riding through the streets of Boston one day with President McKinley, Cortelyou told of his run beside the wheels Arthur's carriage some years ago and his wish at that moment that he might someday be secretary to a President. 'Well, you've got your wish. George," said McKinley, "and you have deserved it, too." When Roosevelt came in, of course, he kept Cortelyou. Moreover, he stood by the arrangement which McKinley himself had made and appointed Cortelyou Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

Seven or eight weeks ago, one of the President’s personal and unofficial friends was at the White House at luncheon. This friend knew the trouble the President was having in finding just the right man for chairman of the national committee.  Two or three men he wanted he could not get, for one reason or another, and certain corporations and politicians were trying to thrust upon him men he did want. "Mr. President," said this friend.

"I have a national chairman lor you a man who belongs to no factions, is not the choice of any corporation,  who has the confidence of all Republicans, who was close to McKinley and Hanna, and is close to you, who Is honest, able, strong- " "Who is he, who is he?" asked the President. "George Cortelyou."

The President thought that a suggestion worth thinking about. It was a new idea. No one had suggested Cortelyou before. Cortelyou had not been thought of in that connection. In looking for a man for a certain task are all prone to hunt far away and to overlook the man at our elbow. The President did think about Cortelyou. He consulted his advisers. In a week Cortelyou's name was on the slate.

It pays to be the best stenographer in the office, the best salesman in the store, the best bookkeeper in the counting-room, the best workman in the shop, the best hostler in the stable. On taking his seat as the unanimously elected chairman of the Republican national committee, George Cortelyou said to the members of that body: "In this office I want the advice and the help of all of you - the old and experienced members as well as the younger and newer ones. But as the responsibility is mine, I am going to meet it fully, as I think you would have me meet it, without dictation from any man." This was said with a purpose.

Though Chairman Cortelyou Is the personal selection of President Roosevelt, as every national campaign manager Is the choice of the presidential candidate, though Mr. Cortelyou Is to manage the campaign under the general direction of the candidate, as every campaign manager does, he is to be something more than the servant of the President. He has ideas of his own. He may not always agree with the President. He is going to be campaign manager in fact as well as in name. As President Roosevelt has said: "Cortelyou will attend to the duties of his office while I attend to the duties of my office." After the campaign is over Cortelyou is to take Henry C. Payne's place as Postmaster General. Thus, in ten years he will have completed the circuit from stenographer in the Post office Department to the White House, to the cabinet, to successor of Mark Hanna as chairman of the national Republican committee, and back to the Post office Department again - as its chief. Pretty good work for ten years, on merit alone, without wealth or political influence or anything but a habit of being the best wherever he is put.

"They say there are no opportunities for young men in our country," remarked a Chicago lawyer, who was formerly a government official. "Why, ten years ago, when I was in Washington, there was a young chap in the Civil Service Commission, a cranky, snappy, quarrelsome sort of fellow, who was not much liked by the politicians and who apparently had about as much chance to rise in political lifer as that waiter over there who has just served us our lemonade. Now that young chap is the President of the United States, the unanimous choice of his party for another term, a record-smasher in American public life.

 "And my next-door neighbor in the Post office Department was a young: stenographer, a quiet fellow who rarely had a word to say, who was not known to more than a couple of dozen people in the department, but who just went on sawing wood. He is now the chairman of the Republican national committee and is to be the new Postmaster General. It's a queer world, isn't it?"

There is a popular misconception that the White House was first painted white to cover the scorch marks left by British soldiers who burned the house on August 24, 1814.

In fact, the White House first received a lime-based whitewash in 1798 to protect its sandstone exterior from moisture and cracking during winter freezes. The term “White House” was occasionally used in newspapers and periodicals throughout the nineteenth century, but most journalists, citizens, and visitors referred to it as either the “President’s House” or the “Executive Mansion.”

On October 17, 1901,  President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary George B. Cortelyou sent a letter to Secretary of State John Hay. At Roosevelt’s direction, Cortelyou asked Secretary Hay and his staff to change “the headings, or date lines, of all official papers and documents requiring his [Roosevelt’s] signature, from ‘Executive Mansion’ to ‘White House.’” Similar directives were sent to other cabinet secretaries, and Roosevelt changed the presidential stationery shortly thereafter as well.

Phenomenal Rise of a Clerk in a Democratic Administration to Three Republican Cabinet Offices

New York Times, May 26, 1907

WASHINGTON, May 21 —

"Has he reached the limit?" asked Charles Emory Smith at the Post Office men's dinner to George B. Cortelyou in New York last Wednesday night.

And the crowd thundered: "No!"

He had recited Cortelyou’s progress through the Cabinet, from the bottom of the list — the Commerce Department — up via the Post Office to the Treasury, which ranks second only to the State Department. He wanted to know if the Treasury was the limit, and the crowd assured him that it wasn’t.

What did Charles Emory Smith mean by "the limit"?

There is only one Cabinet office that is higher, and Mr. Cortelyou is not a candidate for Secretary of State, is not fitted to be Secretary of State, and never will be Secretary of State. His varied talents do not include those of Elihu Root, and his varied tastes include no liking for foreign affairs.

Technically, the Vice Presidency is higher than the Secretaryship of the Treasury, but you can’t make anybody believe it. Outside the State Department there is only one step higher for George B. Cortelyou, sometime stenographer and clerk — and not so very long ago, either.

That is the Presidency.
That is "the limit."
That is what Mr. Smith meant, and it is what every man who shouted "No!" understood him to mean. And it is what George B. Cortelyou means.

Self-contained, self-repressed, quiet, and unemotional as he seems, the clerical machine raised to the highest point, Cortelyou has imagination.
And that imagination has been fired by his own rise.
He regards himself as a man of destiny.

There is no reason why any man with any imagination at all should not be impressed by a meteoric progress that is without parallel in the history of the Republic.
A Government clerkship has never been regarded as a road to political prominence and high National office. We take our Cabinet Ministers and Presidents from other fields — from the forum and sometimes from the battlefield — but never from the clerical force in Washington.

Cortelyou, stenographer and clerk all his life, stepped suddenly into the Secretaryship of Commerce and Labor; held that job a year; became Chairman of the Republican National Committee; stepped from that up to the Postmaster Generalship, and left that in two years to be Secretary of the Treasury.

It is only about four years since he ceased to be a clerk — for the office of secretary to the President is a high-grade clerkship, which Cortelyou had attained by steady progress through the lower grades.

From Clerkship to Cabinet

When George H. Pendleton boosted the civil service reform law through Congress, neither he nor George William Curtis nor any of the dreamers of that day could have dreamed of any such extension of the law as the progress from clerk to three Cabinet offices — and perhaps to Charles Emory Smith’s "limit."

Cortelyou was a Government stenographer when Wilson S. Bissell recommended him to President Cleveland as “a New Yorker, a handsome young fellow, smart as chain lightning,” and got him transferred to the White House force.
He was not secretary to the President then; he was just a stenographer;
for Cortelyou has never got anywhere by gift or favoritism — he just rises.

He went to the White House in a rise. Subordinate capacity to rise, ahe rose till he was the head of the White House force.

He succeeded a failure named John Addison Porter. Secretaries to the President do not generally get that position by rising — not through the merit system, not through promotion. Usually a President picks out somebody he knew at home, or somebody who helped him in his campaign and isn't big enough to get a Cabinet office or other high Government job.

Hence the secretary to the President is usually a joke. Prior to Cortelyou's promotion the job had been the stock target for paragraphers. Dan Lamont was an exception; H. K. Thurber and John Addison Porter represented the rule. Usually the secretary, being a small man, suffered a grotesque inflation of the head as soon as he found himself dealing with public men, and his head underwent progressive enlargement until he lost his job. Such was the history of John Addison Porter, who was probably the extreme limit in the way of impossible secretaries.

Then some good angel whispered to William McKinley to violate the time-dishonored precedent and not take Porter's successor from the ranks of the broken-down political hacks he used to know, or from the list of reporters who had done good press work for him out at home, but to promote a good clerk. And George B. Cortelyou, who had steadily risen in the White House force, and who supplied all the brains that had redeemed Porter's incumbency, was the only man to promote. So Cortelyou became secretary.

Business Methods in the White House

Within a short time after this unprecedented event it began to dawn on official Washington that McKinley had an entirely new kind of secretary; that the White House force of which he was the head had organized and was doing business efficiently and in a business-like manner; that the old helter-skelter methods and the grizzly absurdities, too funny for tears, had disappeared; that the White House was being run as a business office.

A new, radical, revolutionary idea began to dawn on Washington — an idea so utterly subversive of the established and well-sanctioned methods of a century that it seemed to call for its own rejection as a maniacal delusion. And yet it recurred again and again, till all Washington was asking itself with incredulous joy:

"Can it be? Is it possible that a secretary to the President can have brains?"

Soon this apparently impossible thing had settled down to accepted fact and become a commonplace. Cortelyou raised the hitherto comic job into dignity and banished it from the stock-in-trade of paragraphers. He dispatched business like Aladdin's genii raising palaces, and yet he worked all the time, from dawn to midnight. Persons who went to the White House on business found, to their astonished glee, that they could get the business attended to with all the dispatch and completeness of a wholesale dry goods store or a bank.

He manifested a characteristic which has stayed with him ever since — an aversion to language. Whenever he had to use any it seemed to worry him. If he had to speak, he disclosed a superhuman genius for getting all that he was obliged to say into the shortest possible compass. When he had finished, he stopped, instead of going on.
Nobody else has shown so much skill in getting a column and a half into six words.
Conversations with Cortelyou were usually short, but contained as much information as another man could have dispensed in an hour. This accounted largely for the immense number of conversations he could hold in a single day.

He is still that way. He always will be.

When the Department of Commerce and Labor was created, the man needed for the job was an organizer, not a Statesman. The first Secretary must be a man who could weld together the various heterogeneous bureaus to be collected in the new department and the new ones created especially for it and put them on a business footing in the shortest possible time. No retiring Senator, defeated Congressman, or Senator’s henchman was wanted for that place. President Roosevelt knew what an organizer Cortelyou was, for he had seen his work with the White House force, and the lifelong clerk stepped into the Cabinet.

His organizing work was a thing to stare at. He collected around him a force of young men — 36 was an advanced age in that department, and a man who had reached it was looked on as a patriarch. He set the example of working till midnight, and his young men did their best to beat him at that. Under his eye, the department, in existence less than a year, became the best-organized in the Government service.

Then Roosevelt made him Chairman of the National Committee.
The way he ran that organization is still remembered by the old-line politicians with tears of rage. The offices in New York looked exactly like those of a life insurance company and business was done in about the same way. He took some of his young men over with him, men who had never been in politics, but knew all about Cortelyou’s ideas of organization. Men accustomed to the good old style of tobacco-chewing headquarters and loud noises went swaggering into this den of silence and came out on tiptoe.

Then the President made Cortelyou Postmaster General. The Post Office Department is the biggest in the Government and had always been loosely organized. The postal scandal of 1903 was the result of this loose organization and lack of system. President Roosevelt was convinced that postal scandals would recur again and again unless the department was put on a better business footing.

Who was the man for that but Cortelyou the organizer of the White House force, the creator of the Commerce Department, the business boss of the National Committee?
In fact, Roosevelt meant him for this job even while he was in Commerce Department.

Cortelyou went in, and a heavy pall of silence fell over the Post Office Department. Ruddy-faced men with loud voices forgot their own names and talked with their fingers.
Cortelyou started organizing. The first thing he discovered was that Postmasters were under the direction of the First Assistant, while the clerks and carriers under these Postmasters were under the Fourth Assistant. He put them all under the First Assistant, who was one of those bright young men of his that had tried to beat him at the job of working till midnight in the Commerce Department and had subsequently helped him to make the National Committee a business institution. Hitchcock his name was.

This mix-up of the Postmasters and carriers was typical of the happy-go-lucky "system" that had prevailed in the Post Office Department ever since there was a Post Office Department. Cortelyou went to the whole thing with a club, and when he got through it was systemized like a National bank. He abolished the system of fines and demerits and installed one of promotions based on good work. He took the Post Office Inspectors away from the Fourth Assistant and put them under his own direction, for they are the secret service………………

He regarded it as a manifest absurdity to put [the Post Office Inspectors] under anybody’s direction but the chief’s. But these changes were only a few of the most striking of those by which Cortelyou turned the big, burly, overgrown department from a loose-ended monstrosity into a business institution.

He decided, for instance, that letters could get more quickly from one place to another if automobiles were used instead of horses and wagons.
That hadn’t struck any of his predecessors.
But it turned out that there was no appropriation for automobiles, only for "horse hire," and that it would be necessary to wait till Congress convened again and made an appropriation for automobiles.
Waiting is abhorrent to the mind of Cortelyou.

The matter was turned over to the law department, and that institution turned in a decision that "horse hire" meant horse hire and not automobile hire.
That seemed to end the matter.
The sad news was brought to Cortelyou.

"Don’t we buy wagons out of this 'horse hire' fund?" asked Cortelyou, after trying to find a way to put the question in less than ten words, and failing.

"We do."

"Then buy horseless wagons," said Cortelyou, with some self-approval at having been able to solve the problem in four words; and the thing was done.

Last session, Victor Murdock, the red-headed warrior from Wichita, made a hard fight in Congress to abolish the graft whereby the railroads get paid for seven days' weighing of the mails a week, while in fact the mails are weighed only six days a week.
It is a little item whereby $5,000,000 of graft is turned over to the railroads for nothing, a little present from their Uncle Sam.

The railroads rallied their forces and beat Murdock.
The $5,000,000 present stayed in the appropriation bill.
The shindy in Congress attracted Cortelyou’s attention to the subject, and before leaving the Post Office Department, he quietly issued an executive order knocking out the $5,000,000 present.
Nobody had imagined before that there was any way to do it but by Congressional action.
Cortelyou did it, and it went.

His Work in the Treasury

He has been in the Treasury Department about two months, talking as little as ever and organizing as hard as ever.
He found as soon as he got in that there was no way of getting a trial balance, that the only way to get at anything was to go over a stack of books a mile high, at infinite cost of time, which is money.
So he installed a modern double-entry system of bookkeeping.
It was simple, but it had never occurred to anybody before.

Then he turned his attention to the fact that nobody can steal any money out of the Treasury here, but that people can and do steal money every little while out of the sub-treasuries in different parts of the country.
He is now engaged in reorganizing the sub-treasuries so as to make stealing just as impossible there as it is here.

He is also planning a force of Treasury Inspectors, which he can send around like National bank examiners, but he will have to wait till Congress meets before he can get that.

Meanwhile, he has turned his attention to the relation between politics and National bank deposits, and has begun work on a plan to divorce the two and maroon politics on a desert island somewhere.
For one thing, he is going to distribute the deposits around the country as much as possible.
He has got Controller Ridgley and Director Roberts working on this plan now.

But there is something else he has done in these two months that is worth even more attention from the standpoint of John Smith, the man in the street, who doesn’t care much about double-entry bookkeeping, but is interested quite a lot, according to the public prints, in the relation between corporations and the Government.
This is a branch of the subject that will have to be dealt with delicately and tenderly, because so many good turtle-fed gentlemen with white side-whiskers and protuberant waistcoats and bulging bank accounts are always deeply pained when it is alluded to, and the giving of pain to one’s fellow-creatures should always be avoided when possible.

This is the question of the relation of the Standard Oil Company to the Treasury Department of the United States.
Avoiding as much as possible the danger of giving pain to the turtle-fed gentlemen with the side whiskers, let us gloss the matter over as gently as possible by alluding to it as a mere coincidence that the National City Bank of New York always seems to get there first.
Whenever anything is to be done that would naturally interest persons who have quite a good deal of money, James Stillman and other folks who occasionally meet John D. Rockefeller in a social way seem to hear about it before other people do, and when there is anything to be done, they usually do it, and other people don’t.

It is best to be a little vague about this, because whenever there have been other people who have shown a disposition to get peevish about it and inquire why the National City Bank gets all the persimmons, the Treasury Department always has an explanation ready proving conclusively that it is all a coincidence, nothing more.

Imagination with Limitations

Cortelyou, however, is a person who dislikes coincidences.
As has been mentioned, he possesses imagination, but his imagination has limits, and its northern boundary is just south of the territory of coincidence.
In other words, he doesn’t believe in coincidences.
He is a materialist on that subject, and it would take the whole Psychical Research Society to convince him that anything mysterious has anything to do with the Treasury Department.

Hence, he has been detaching the long arm of coincidence from the neck of the Treasury Department.
He has been plugging up the holes and installing a system whereby if the National City Bank ever gets a smell of anything before it happens, it will be through a spiritualistic medium.

He has also been quietly moving a few gentlemen out of the Treasury Department into other fields.
To do this grieves him, but he is solaced by the reflection that they will not starve, that various banks not unknown at 26 Broadway will probably look out for them.

He has determined to see to it that no man who is employed in the Treasury Department under him hereafter shall leave that department to take a fat job in a Rockefeller bank.
That has been the road invariably trodden for some years back by Treasury Department officials who have been in a position to help out the National City Bank in one way or another.

Of course, it is a mere coincidence — but Cortelyou intends that this coincidence shall happen no more.

One very curious reform has been installed by Cortelyou.
He refuses to call up New York over the long-distance telephone when he has anything to say about finance.
Gage and Shaw used to do that, but not Cortelyou.

This is probably a mere eccentricity of Cortelyou’s.
It would never do to hint that he had adopted this reform because persons not intended to be privy to the conversation might reap financial advantage therefrom, for to hint that would show Cortelyou up as the possessor of a suspicious disposition.

And it would give pain to the turtle-fed and the side-whiskered.

TELEGRAM

White House, Washington

Tuskegee, Ala., November 7, 1902.

Geo. B. Cortelyou:

“Do not want Thompson appointment held up. Hope change can be made at once. Do not forget to appoint Mr. John S. Webb at same time as postmaster at Tuskegee. My telegram regarding Judge Roulhac related to making advisory committee in this State stronger and more useful. Will advise fully in this matter after seeing Gen. Clarkson. Am sorry about opposition to Dr. Crum. Think it based on color and not character. His case would be greatly helped with some white support.”

Booker T. Washington.