San Francisco, November 13,1905

My dear Whitney,—­I have just returned from a two months’ trip through Mexico, from the Rio Grande to Guatemala, and from the Gulf to the Pacific, and know nothing whatever concerning the Interstate Commerce Commissionership, save what I have seen in the papers since my return. ...  I have not put myself in the position of soliciting, either directly or indirectly, this appointment; I have never even stimulated to a slight degree the activity ... of my friends on my behalf.  There is some misgiving in my own mind as to whether acceptance of the position would be of benefit to me either politically, or otherwise.  I have no doubt the nomination for Governor can be mine next year without effort, and what the outcome of an election would be in 1906, even in a Republican State, is not now to be prophesied, in view of the somersaults in Ohio and Pennsylvania of a week ago.  Of course, ... it is a great opportunity to prove or disprove the capacity of this government to control effectively the corporations which seem determined to be its master.

It does look to me as if the problem of our generation is to be the discovery of some effective method by which the artificial persons whom we have created by law can be taught that they are not the creators, the owners, and the rightful managers of the government.  The real greatness of the President’s policy, to my notion, is that he has determined to prove to the railroads that they have not the whole works, and the policy that they have followed is as short-sighted as it can be.  It will lead, if pursued as it has been begun, to the wildest kind of a craze for government ownership of everything.  Just as you people in New York City were forced, by the delinquency and corruption of the gas combine, to undertake the organization of a municipal ownership movement, so it may be that the same qualities in the railroads will create precisely the same spirit throughout the country.

I appreciate thoroughly your position in New York. ... [Hearst] knows public sentiment and how to develop it very well, and will be a danger in the United States, I am afraid, for many years to come.  He has great capacity for disorganization of any movement that is not his own, and an equal capacity for organization of any movement that is his personal property.  He feels with the people, but he has no conscience. ...  He is willing to do whatever for the minute the people may want done and give them what they cry for, unrestrained by sense of justice, or of ultimate effect.  He is the great American Pander.

Reverting again to the Interstate Commerce Commissionership, I think the railroads here are determined that no Pacific Coast man shall be appointed.  That has been the policy of the Southern Pacific since the creation of the Commission. ...