Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia - Initial Problems and New Leadership

Initial Problems and New Leadership

But from the beginning the project was plagued with problems. Hart's time was taken up with other commitments. He was editor of the American Year Book, 1926–1932, edited a five-volume history of Massachusetts in 1927-1930, and worked as the official historian of the George Washington bicentennial commission in the 1920s and 1930s. Hart had to postpone the cyclopedia, and asked the Association for research and clerical staff.

But the Executive Committee of the Roosevelt Memorial Association delayed appropriations for the cyclopedia, because the expense was "so great," and it was not until May 1928 that a budget was approved for the cyclopedia, although the project had been publicly announced years before. Finally, in 1931 Hart presented a rough draft of the cyclopedia to Hagedorn. But the book needed much more work. By now the elderly Hart "began to decline," wrote Samuel Eliot Morison; and Hagedorn reported to the RMA Executive Committee that Hart could not finish the project "because of his advanced years."

In 1939, Hagedorn assigned the cyclopedia to Herbert Ronald Ferleger (1914–1973), a graduate student and professional researcher who had done work for the Association. Ferleger, who graduated from Temple University in 1934, had been a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institute, and had taught at Princeton. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1942. Ferleger completed his work in 1940. William Allen White (1868–1944), the editor of the Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas, a respected and beloved public figure, a trustee of the Association who had been a close friend of TR's, wrote a foreword for the book.