While advocating social reforms and castigating wrong-doers at home, Mr. Roosevelt was equally severe in dealing with Latin-American states which failed to discharge their obligations to other countries faithfully. In his message of December, 1905, he said: "We must make it evident that we do not intend to permit the Monroe doctrine to be used by any nation on this continent as a shield to protect it from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations. If a republic to the south of us commits a tort against a foreign nation, such as an outrage against a citizen of that nation, then the Monroe doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent the punishment of the tort, save to see that the punishment does not assume the form of territorial occupation in any shape. The case is more difficult when it refers to a contractual obligation.... The country would certainly decline to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt; on the other hand it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to take possession, even temporarily, of the custom houses of an American republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations; for such a temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation. The only escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as possible of a just obligation shall be paid." * * * * * Mr. Roosevelt's messages and various activities while he was serving the unexpired term of President McKinley upset all of the conservative traditions of the executive office. He intervened, without power, in the anthracite coal strike of 1902, and had the satisfaction of seeing the miners make substantial gains at the hands of a commission appointed by himself, to which the contestants had agreed to submit the issues. He began a prosecution of the Northern Securities Company at a time when such actions against great combinations of capital were unfashionable. He forced an investigation of the post-office administration in 1903, which revealed frauds of huge dimensions; and he gave the administration of public lands a turning over which led to the successful criminal prosecution of two United States Senators. Citizens acquired the habit of looking to the headlines of the morning paper for some new and startling activity on the part of the President. Politicians of the old school in both parties, who had been used to settling difficulties by quiet conferences within the "organization," stood aghast. They did not like Mr. Roosevelt's methods which they characterized as "erratic"; but the death of Mr. Hanna in February, 1904, took away the only forceful leader who might have consolidated the opposition within Republican ranks. _The Campaign of 1904_