To Edward F. Adams
San Francisco Chronicle
Washington, January 11, 1916
MY DEAR ADAMS,—I have yours of the 2nd. Of course, you can not sue the United States to get possession of its property without the consent of the United States; but I will forgive you for all your peculiar and archaic notions regarding government lands and schools and sich, because I love you for what you are and not because of your inheritance of old-fashioned ideas.
As I am dictating this letter I look up at the wall and discover there the head of a bull moose, and that bull moose makes me think of all the things you said four years ago about Roosevelt. And now he is to be again the master of your party—perhaps not a candidate, because he may be guilty of an act of self-abnegation and put away the crown, or take it in his own hands and place it upon some one else’s brow.
I remember the manner—the scornful, satirical, sometimes pitiful and sometimes abusive manner—in which you treated the Bull Moose; and so we are going to have a great spectacle, the Bull Moose and the Elephant kissing each other at Chicago; and seated on the Elephant’s shoulders will be the crowned mahout with the big barbed stick in his hand, telling you which way to turn and when to kneel!
Of course, you will abuse us all for our land policies, but overlook the fact that the brutalities of these policies were committed in other days—those good, old Republican days. It really is a wonder that you are not cynical and that you still have enthusiasm. I should not be surprised if you said your prayers and had belief in another world, where all the bad Democrats would sizzle to the eternal joy of the good Republicans. In those days I shall look up to you and I know that you will not deny me the drop of cold water.
I shall be very much interested in seeing what kind of a fist our man Claxton makes out of your school system, and I hope you can use him as a means of arousing interest in the schools. That is one trouble with the public school system, because we get our education for nothing we treat it as if it was worth nothing—I mean those of us who are parents. We never know that the school exists except to make some complaint about discipline or taxes.
May you live long and be happy. Always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
From time to time as vacancies occurred on the Supreme Bench, letters and telegrams came to Lane from friends that begged him to allow them to urge his appointment to this office. In 1912, 1914, and 1916 the newspapers in different parts of the country mentioned him as a probable appointee. While, as a young lawyer, this office had seemed to him to be one greatly to be desired, after he came to Washington and knew more of the nature of the cases that necessarily formed the greater part of the work passed upon by the Supreme Court, his interest waned. As early as 1913 he wrote of the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, “If we are wise, we are not to be terrorized by our own precedents.” An office in which there was little opportunity for constructive or executive work grew to have less and less attraction for him.