Charles Fairbanks

• Vice President to:       Teddy Roosevelt - Republican, from New York.
  
  
• Dates Served: Fairbanks served as Vice President from 1905 - 1909.
  
• Political Party: Fairbanks was a Republican, from Indiana.
  
• Born: 1852.
  
• Died: 1918, at the age of 56.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1904 campaign was:
  
  
  • Alton Parker - Democrat - Judge from New York
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1904:
  
  
  • The only real issue this year was personality, and Teddy had personality to burn. His opponent, Judge Parker, didn't stand a chance against the boisterous, rowdy Teddy who entertained every crowd he spoke to. Teddy and his personality swept the election by an indecent margin.
    
    
  
  
• Notable facts about Charles Fairbanks:
  
  
  • Fairbanks had the largest moustache of any Vice President.
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: #######
    
    
  • Charles Fairbanks was born and educated in Ohio, then began practicing law in Indiana in 1874, where he became well-known for representing the railroads.
    
    
  • He began his political career by serving as the keynote speaker at the 1896 Republican National Convention.
    
    
  • He was elected to the US Senate, representing Indiana from 1897 - 1905, where he was a staunch supporter of President McKinley.
    
    
  • During his term in the Senate, a new Gold Rush town in Alaska named itself after Chuck, a name which which still remains today, in Fairbanks, Alaska.
    
    
  • In 1904 he actively pursued the nomination as Vice President to run on Roosevelt's re-election campaign, which he succeeded in with the help of several key newspapers. He was nominated largely due to his party loyalty and generous contributions to the Party coffers.
    
    
  • Fairbanks wasn't nearly as progressive as Roosevelt, and disagreed with many of Teddy's labor-friendly policies and often colluded with the opposition against him. This didn't make for the best of friendships with Teddy.
    
    
  • After his term as Vice President, he refused to support Teddy's campaign for President in 1912, choosing instead to support then-President Taft's re-election campaign.
    
    
  • In 1916, Fairbanks campaigned for Vice President again on Charles Evans Hughes campaign against President Wilson, but lost. He died a year later.
    

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• The Russo-Japanese War, 1904 - 1905. Russia and Japan had gone to war over who would control the areas of Manchuria and the Korean peninsula. Roosevelt mediated an end to the war in 1905 in which Japan basically won and Russia got nothing. As a result of this splendid agreement Teddy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any category. Russia was not happy and Japan's martial confidence was strengthened.
  
  
• Antitrust Policies. Roosevelt was the first president to vigorously pursue an agenda of enforcing a balance between corporate responsibility and free enterprise. During his administration, lawsuits were brought against the railroads, the tobacco companies, the big oil companies, and the cattle industry. The Elkins Act in 1903 and the Hepburn Act in 1906 increased regulation of the railroads, part of the overall antitrust goal Roosevelt called "The Square Deal".
  
  
• The Pure Food and Drug Act, in 1906. After reading the book "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair one morning in the White House, which described the unsanitary conditions in the meat industry, Roosevelt supposedly took his plate of breakfast sausages and threw them out the window and on to the White House lawn in disgust. He then backed legislation which didn't recognize "self-enforcement" by meat-packing companies in maintaining healthy packaging practices, but instead required government inspection of meat and packaging techniques, as well as the proper labelling of medicine and liquor to meet minimum standards of safety.
  
  
• Henny Youngman is born, on March 16, 1906. Tells doctor, "Take my diaper, please...".
  
  
• The Panic of 1907. Sparked by the failures of several large Trust companies, banks, and railroads, prices on the Stock Market sank to dangerous lows, touching off a year-long depression. Conservatives blamed the crisis on Roosevelt's antitrust policies for stifling honest, hard-working big corporations' profits. Roosevelt responded by blaming the business practices of the corporations themselves for the failures. As a compromise, the Administration agreed to not seek antitrust action against several large acquisitions planned by US Steel, and transferred federal funds into several struggling banks, which led to a recovery in 1908.
  
  
• Oklahoma admitted into the Union, in 1907.