Thankfully and cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Early in July, 1913, Lane started on a tour of investigation of National Reclamation projects, Indian reservations and National Parks. With him went Adolph C. Miller, who had become the Director of the Bureau of National Parks in May. They turned to the Northwest, beginning in Minnesota and then proceeding to Montana, Wyoming, and Washington. That he might be thoroughly informed as to conditions in each place, Lane sent ahead of him an old friend and trusted employee, William A. Ryan, whose part it was to go over each project or reservation and find what the causes for complaint were, where poor work had been done, what groups and individuals were dissatisfied, and why. In no way was William Ryan to let it be suspected that he was in any way identified with the Department of the Interior. Traveling in this way, two weeks ahead of the Secretary, Ryan was able to put a complete report of each project in Lane's hands some time before he arrived, so that the Secretary was thoroughly familiar with all complaints and conditions before he was met on the train by the representatives of the Department, who naturally wished to show him only the best work. In addition to this, Lane everywhere held public meetings, inviting all settlers to meet him and make their complaints.
This plan enabled him to cover the ground touched by his Department in a comparatively short time. He traveled by night, wherever possible, and interviewed all those who wished to see him upon business from seven in the morning until twelve or one at night. Sometimes, in a day, he went a hundred and fifty miles in an automobile, spoke to many groups of farmers in different places, heard their complaints against the Department, and told them what the Government was trying to do for them.
During this first tour of inspection Lane reached Portland, Oregon, the latter part of August, and received a telegram from the President asking him to go directly to Denver, there to represent the President and address the Conference of Governors, on August 26th.
Lane left the completion of the proposed itinerary of investigation, in Oregon, to Miller and turned back to Colorado. He made the opening address at the Governors' Conference and then rejoined his party in San Francisco, the first of September. Here, after several days of conferences and speeches, while standing in the sun reviewing the Admission Day parade of the Native Sons, he collapsed. This proved to be an attack of the angina pectoris which, several years later, returned with violence. For three weeks he was ill, but at the end of that time, against the doctor's orders, he insisted upon returning to Washington to his work.
To Mark Sullivan Collier's Weekly
Washington, November 6, 1913
MY DEAR SULLIVAN,--I want to thank you for your sympathetic notice regarding my hard luck out in California, and to let you know that I am in just as good shape now as I have been for twenty years.
[Illustration with caption: FRANKLIN K. LANE, MRS. LANE, MRS. MILLER, AND ADOLPH C. MILLER]
At the end of your little comment you spoke of conditions in the lower grades of the Department as being almost as bad as if they were corrupt. I have not your article before me, but I think this is the meat of it. I wish you would tell me just what you mean by this. I know that lots of things come to men like you that do not reach my ears, although I have retained pretty well my old newspaper faculty of smoking things out.
If we have anything here that is almost rotten, I want to know it before it gets thoroughly rotten. I have found a lot of things that were wrong, and have set most of them right. There has already been a great improvement; for instance, in Indian affairs. Under the last Administration, for example, the highest bid on 200,000 acres of Indian oil lands was one-eighth royalty and a bonus of one dollar an acre. We recently leased 10,000 of these same acres at one-sixth royalty and a bonus of $500,000.
I have had an examination made into probate matters, in Oklahoma, and found an appalling condition of things. In one county where there are six thousand probate cases pending, all involving the interests of Indian minors, the guardians in three thousand cases were delinquent in filing reports, and otherwise in complying with the law. This week I have arranged with the Five Civilized Tribes to institute a cooperative method of checking up all of these accounts and giving them personal consideration; especially appointing an attorney to look after the interests of these minors in each of the counties in eastern Oklahoma. We are to aid the Oklahoma courts in cleaning up the State.
Let me have any facts that will be of help. Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Edward M. House
Washington, November 19, 1913
MY DEAR COLONEL,--I had a call last Sunday morning from Mr. Blank of New York, who came to feel me out on the reorganization of the Democratic party in New York City, with particular reference to the question of how to treat one William R. Hearst ...
... [He] has been working for some years, evidently in more or less close but indirect alliance with Hearst, through Clarence Shearn and a man named O'Reilly, who is Hearst's political secretary. In re-creating the Democratic organization in New York, he felt it necessary to take Hearst's assistance.
I was perfectly frank with him, saying that Hearst would be pleased no doubt to reorganize a new Tammany Hall, or any other Democratic organization, provided he could run it. He would stand in with anybody and be as gentle as a queen dove for the purpose of destroying the existing organization, but that he was a very overbearing and arbitrary man, with whom no one could work in creating a new organization, unless he regarded himself as an employee of Hearst. Moreover, I did not see how it was possible to take Hearst and his crowd, even on a minority basis, so long as they were fighting the Administration, and that I understood Hearst had recently more emphatically than ever read himself out of the Democratic Party. I told Blank that ... I should not expect any cooperation between the Federal Government and an organization in which Hearst was a factor. However, I said that I knew nothing whatever as to the feeling of any member of the Cabinet or the President respecting the matter, because I had not discussed the matter with them.
... I am writing this because I want you to know what is going on. Evidently Blank came over from New York on the midnight train and had no other business here except to see me, and perhaps others, on this matter. ... Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
When President Wilson took Franklin K. Lane from the Interstate Commerce Commission to put him in his Cabinet there arose the question of his successor, on the Commission. After consulting Lane, the President appointed in his place, John Marble, also of California. A few months after his appointment Mr. Marble died suddenly, and Lane lost one of his closest friends.
To James H. Barry San Francisco Star
Washington, December 1, 1913
MY DEAR JIM,--I didn't get your telegram until Monday, but I had taken care of you in the same way that I took care of myself, in regard to flowers. I bought three bunches, one for you, one for Mrs. Lane, and one for myself.
The most surprising thing, my dear Jim, is the manner in which Mrs. Marble has taken John's death. We took her to our house, where the morning after his death she told me that she had talked with him; that he had chided her on breaking down constantly. Since then, both morning and evening, she says she has seen him and talked with him. The result is a spirit on her part almost of gayety, at times. She is really reconciled to his going, because he has told her that it was best and that he has other work to do.
I don't know what to say of all this. It mystifies me. It has tended greatly to support me against the depth of sorrow which I felt at the beginning. There is no evidence of hysteria on her part, whatever. She dictated to Mrs. Lane, who was sitting beside her, some of the things that John said to her. It certainly is a glorious belief, at such a time, and I am not prepared to say that it is not so, and that its manifestations are not real.
... It is an impossible thing to get a man to take his place, either on the Commission or in our hearts. I believe that he worked himself to death ... Affectionately yours,
F. K. L.
To Edward F. Adams
Washington, January 10, 1914
MY DEAR MR. ADAMS,-- ... Our most difficult problem is that of water. Colorado, for instance, claims that all of the water that falls within her borders can be used and should be used exclusively for the development of Colorado lands. Southern California has made a protest against my giving rights of way in the upper reaches of the Colorado for the diversion of water on to Colorado lands saying that Imperial Valley is entitled to the full normal flow of the Colorado. The group of men who hold land in Mexico south of the Imperial Valley make the same claim. Arizona wishes to have a large part of this water used on her soil, and the people of Colorado are divided as to whether the water should be carried over on to the eastern side of the Rockies or allowed to flow down in its natural channel on the western side.