I have said that Roosevelt devoted the two years after he came
back to New York to writing, but it would be a mistake to imagine
that writing alone busied him. He was never a man who did or
would do only one thing at a time. His immense energy craved
variety, and in variety he found recreation. Now that the
physical Roosevelt had caught up in relative strength with the
intellectual, he could take what holidays requiring exhaustless
bodily vigor he chose. The year seldom passed now when he did not
go West for a month or two. Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow were
established with their families on the Elkhorn Ranch, which
Roosevelt continued to own, although, I believe, like many
ranches at that period, it ceased to be a good investment.
Sometimes he made a hurried dash to southern Texas, or to the
Selkirks, or to Montana in search of new sorts of game. In the
mountains he indulged in climbing, but this was not a favorite
with him because it offered less sport in proportion to the
fatigue. While he was still a young man he had gone up the
Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, feats which still required endurance,
although they did not involve danger.
While we think of him, therefore, as dedicating himself to his
literary work--the "Winning of the West" and the accounts of
ranch life--we must remember that he had leisure for other
things. He watched keenly the course of politics, for instance,
and in 1888 when the Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison as
their candidate for President, Roosevelt supported him
effectively and took rank with the foremost Republican speakers
of the campaign. After his election Harrison, who both recognized
Roosevelt's great ability and felt under obligation to him,
wished to offer him the position of an under-secretary in the
State Department; but Blaine, who was slated for Secretary of
State, had no liking for the young Republican whose coolness in
1884 he had not forgotten. So Harrison invited Roosevelt to be a
Civil Service Commissioner. The position had never been
conspicuous; its salary was not large; its duties were of the
routine kind which did not greatly tax the energies of the
Commissioners, who could never hope for fame, but only for the
approval of their own consciences for whatever good work they
did. The Machine Republicans, whether of national size, or of
State or municipal, were glad to know that Roosevelt would be put
out of the way in that office.
They already thought of him as a young man dangerous to all
Machines and so they felt the prudence of bottling him up. To
make him a Civil Service Commissioner was not exactly so final as
chloroforming a snarling dog would be, but it was a strong
measure of safety. Theodore's friends, on the other hand, advised
him against accepting the appointment, because, they said, it
would shelve him, politically, use up his brains which ought to
be spent on higher work, and allow the country which was just
beginning to know him to forget his existence. Men drop out of
sight so quickly at Washington unless they can stand on some
pedestal which raises them above the multitude.
The Optimist of the future, to hasten whose coming we are all
making the world so irresistibly attractive, will be endowed, let
us hope, with a sense of humor. With that, he can read history as
a cosmic joke-book, and not as the Biography of the Devil, as
many of us moderns, besides Jean Paul, have found it. How long it
has taken, and how much blood has been spilt before this or that
most obvious folly has been abolished! With what absurd tenacity
have men flown in the face of reason and flouted common sense! So
our Optimist, looking into the conditions which made Civil
Service Reform imperative, will shed tears either of pity or of
laughter.
As long ago as the time of the cave-dweller, who was clothed in
shaggy hair instead of in broadcloth or silk, prehistoric man
learned that the best arrow or spear was that tipped with the
best piece of flint. In brief, to do good work, you must have
good tools. Translated into the terms of today, this means that
the expert or specialist must be preferred to the untrained. In
nearly all walks of life this truth was taken for granted, except
in affairs connected with government and administration. A
President might be elected, not because he was experienced in
these matters, but because he had won a battle, or was the
compromise candidate between two other aspirants. As it was with
Presidents, so with the Cabinet officers, Congressmen, and State
and city officials. Fitness being ignored as a qualification to
office, made it easy for favoritism and selfish motives to
determine the appointment of the army of employees required in
the bureaus and departments. That good old political freebooter,
Andrew Jackson, merely put into words what his predecessors had
put into practice: "To the victors belong the spoils." And since
his time, more than one upright and intelligent theorist on
government has supported the Party System even to the point where
the enjoyment of the spoils by the victors seems justified. The
"spoils" were the salaries paid to the lower grade of placemen
and women--salaries usually not very large, but often far above
what those persons could earn in honest competition. As the money
came out of the public purse, why worry? And how could party
enthusiasm during the campaign and at the polls be kept up, if
some of the partisans might not hope for tangible rewards for
their services? Many rich men sat in Congress, and the Senate be
came, proverbially, a millionaires' club. But not one of these
plutocrats conducted the private business which made him rich by
the methods to which he condemned the business administration of
the government. He did not fill his counting-room with shirkers
and incompetents; he did not find sinecures for his wife's poor
relations; he did not pad his payroll with parasites whose
characteristics were an itching palm and an unconquerable
aversion to work. He knew how to select the quickest, cleverest,
most industrious assistants, and through them he prospered.
That a man who had sworn to uphold and direct his government to
the best of his ability, should have the conscience to treat his
country as he did not treat himself, can be easily explained: he
had no conscience. Fashion, like a local anaesthetic, deadens the
sensitiveness of conscience in this or that spot; and the
prevailing fashion under all governments, autocratic or
democratic, has permitted the waste and even the dishonest
application of public funds.
These anomalies at last roused the sense of humor of some of our
citizens, just as the injustice and dishonesty which the system
embodied roused the moral sense of others; and the Reform of the
Civil Service--a dream at first, and then a passionate cause
which the ethical would not let sleep--came into being. But to
the politicians of the old type, the men of "inflooence" and
"pull," the project seemed silly. They ridiculed it, and they
expected to make it ridiculous in the eyes of the American
people, by calling it "Snivel" Service Reform. Zealots, however,
cannot be silenced by mockery. The contention that fitness should
have something to do in the choice of public servants was
effectively confirmed by the scientific departments of the
government. The most shameless Senator would not dare to propose
his brother's widow to lead an astronomical expedition, or to
urge the appointment of the ward Boss of his city as Chairman of
the Coast Survey. So the American people perceived that there
were cases in which the Spoils System did not apply. The
reformers pushed ahead; Congress at last took notice, and a law
was passed bringing a good many appointees in the Post Office and
other departments under the Merit System. The movement then
gained ground slowly and the spoilsmen began to foresee that if
it spread to the extent which seemed likely, it would deprive
them of much of their clandestine and corrupting power. Senator
Roscoe Conkling, one of the wittiest and most brazen of these,
remarked, that when Dr. Johnson told Boswell that "patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel," he had not sounded the
possibilities of "reform."
The first administration of President Cleveland, who was a great,
irremovable block of stubbornness in whatever cause he thought
right, gave invaluable help to this one. The overturn of the
Republican Party, after it had held power for twenty-four years,
entailed many changes in office and in all classes of
office-holders. Cleveland had the opportunity, therefore, of
applying the Merit System as far as the law had carried it, and
his actions gave Civil Service Reformers much though not complete
satisfaction. The movement was just at the turning-point when
Roosevelt was appointed Commissioner in 1 889. Under listless or
timid direction it would have flagged and probably lost much
ground; but Roosevelt could never do anything listlessly and
whatever he pushed never lost ground.
The Civil Service Commission appointed by President Harrison
consisted of three members, of whom the President was C. R.
Procter, later Charles Lyman, with Roosevelt and Hugh Thompson,
an ex-Confederate soldier. I do not disparage Roosevelt's
colleagues when I say that they were worthy persons who did not
claim to have an urgent call to reform the Civil Service, or
anything else. They were not of the stuff which leads revolts or
reforms, but they were honest and did their duty firmly. They
stood by Roosevelt "shoulder to shoulder," and Thompson's mature
judgment restrained his impetuosity. Roosevelt always
acknowledged what he owed to the Southern gentleman. In a very
short time the Commission, Congress, and the public learned that
it was Roosevelt, the youngest member, just turned thirty years
of age, who steered the Commission. Hostile critics would say, of
course, that he usurped the leadership; but I think that this is
inaccurate. It was not his conceit or ambition, it was destiny
working through him, which made where he sat the head of the
table. Being tremendously interested in this cause and
incomparably abler than Lyman or Thompson, he naturally did most
of the work, and his decisions shaped their common policy. The
appeal to his sense of humor and his sense of justice stimulated
him, and being a man who already saw what large consequences
sometimes flow from small causes he must have been buoyed up by
the thought that any of the cases which came before him might set
a very important precedent.
Roosevelt acted on the principle that the office holder who
swears to carry out a law must do this without hesitation or
demur. If the law is good, enforcing it will make its goodness
apparent to everybody; if it is bad, it will become the more
quickly odious and need to be repealed. Roosevelt enforced the
Civil Service Law with the utmost rigor. It called for the
examination of candidates for office, and the examiners paid some
heed to their moral fitness. Its opponents tried to stir up
public opinion against it by circulating what purported to be
some of its examination papers. Why, they asked, should a man who
wished to be a letter-carrier in Keokuk, be required to give a
list of the Presidents of the United States? Or what was the
shortest route for a letter going from Bombay to Yokohama? By
these and similar spurious questions the spoilsmen hoped to get
rid of the reformers. But "shrewd slander," as Roosevelt called
it, could not move him. Two specimen cases will suffice to show
how he reduced shrewd slanderers to confusion. The first was
Charles Henry Grosvenor, an influential Republican Congressman
from Ohio, familiarly known as the "Gentle Shepherd of Ohio,"
because of his efforts to raise the tariff on wool for the
benefit of the owners of the few thousand sheep in that State. A
Congressional Committee was investigating the Civil Service
Commission and Roosevelt asked that Grosvenor, who had attacked
it, might be summoned. Grosvenor, however, did not appear, but
when he learned that Roosevelt was going to his Dakota ranch for
a vacation, he sent word that he would come. Nevertheless, this
gallant act failed to save him, for Roosevelt canceled his ticket
West, and confronted Grosvenor at the investigation. The Gentle
Shepherd protested that he had never said that he wished to
repeal the Civil Service Law; whereupon Roosevelt read this
extract from one of his speeches: "I will vote not only to strike
out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law."
When Roosevelt pointed out the inconsistency of the two
statements, Grosvenor declared that they meant the same thing.
Being caught thus by one foot in Roosevelt's mantrap, he quickly
proceeded to be caught by the other. He declared that Rufus P.
Putnam, one of the candidates in dispute, had never lived in
Grosvenor's Congressional district, or even in Ohio. Then Mr.
Roosevelt quoted from a letter written by Grosvenor: "Mr. Rufus
P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district, and has relatives
living there now." With both feet caught in the man-trap, the
Gentle Shepherd was suffering much pain, but Truth is so great a
stranger to spoilsmen that he found difficulty in getting within
speaking distance of her. For he protested, first, that he never
wrote the letter, next, that he had forgotten that he wrote it,
and finally, that he was misinformed when he wrote it. So far as
appears, he never risked a tilt with the smiling young
Commissioner again, but returned to his muttons and their
fleeces.
A still more distinguished personage fell before the enthusiastic
Commissioner. This was Arthur Pue Gorman, a Senator from
Maryland, a Democrat, one of the most pertinacious agents of the
Big Interests in the United States Congress. Evidently, also, he
served them well, as they kept him in the Senate for nearly
twenty-five years, until his death. They employed Democrats as
well as Republicans, just as they subscribed to both Democratic
and Republican campaign funds. For, "in politics there is no
politics." Gorman, who knew that the Spoils System was almost
indispensable to the running of a political machine, waited for a
chance to attack the Civil Service Commission. Thinking that the
propitious moment had come, he inveighed against it in the
Senate. He "described with moving pathos," as Roosevelt tells the
story, "how a friend of his, 'a bright young man from Baltimore,'
a Sunday-School scholar, well recommended by his pastor, wished
to be a letter-carrier;" but the cruel examiners floored him by
asking the shortest route from Baltimore to China, to which he
replied that, as he never wished to go to China, he hadn't looked
up the route. Then, Senator Gorman asserted, the examiners
quizzed him about all the steamship lines from the United States
to Europe, branched off into geology and chemistry, and "turned
him down."
Gorman was unaware that the Commissioners kept records of all
their examinations, and when Roosevelt wrote him a polite note
inquiring the name of the "bright young man from Baltimore,"
Gorman did not reply. Roosevelt also asked him, in case he shrank
from giving the name of his informant, to give the date when the
alleged examination took place. He even offered to open the files
to any representative the Senator chose to send. Gorman, however,
"not hitherto known as a sensitive soul," as Roosevelt remarks,
"expressed himself as so shocked at the thought that the veracity
of the bright young man should be doubted, that he could not
bring himself to answer my letter." Accordingly, Roosevelt made a
public statement that the Commissioners had never asked the
questions which Gorman alleged. Gorman waited until the next
session of Congress and then, in a speech before the Senate,
complained that he had received a very "impudent" letter from
Commissioner Roosevelt "cruelly" calling him to account, when he
was simply endeavoring to right a great wrong which the
Commission had committed. But neither then nor afterwards did he
furnish "any clue to the identity of that child of his fondest
fancy, the bright young man without a name."
Roosevelt must have chuckled with a righteous exultation at such
evidence as this that the Lord had delivered the Philistines into
his hands; and his abomination of the Spoils System must have
deepened when he saw its Grosvenors and its Gormans brazen out
the lies he caught them telling.
When the spoilsmen failed to get rid of the Commission by
ridicule and by open attack, they resorted to the trick of not
appropriating money for it in this or that district. But this did
not succeed, for the Commission, owing to lack of funds, held no
examinations in those districts, and therefore no candidates from
them could get offices. This made the politicians unpopular with
the hungry office-seekers whom they deprived of their food at the
public trough.
The Commission had to struggle, however, not only to keep unfit
candidates out of office, but to keep in office those who
discharged their duty honestly and zealously. After every
election there came a rush of Congressmen and others, to turn out
the tried and trusty employees and to put in their own
applicants. Such an overturn was of course detrimental to the
service; first, because it substituted greenhorns for trained
employees, and next, because it introduced the haphazard of
politicians' whims for a just scheme of promotion and retention
in office. Roosevelt lamented bitterly over the injustice and he
denounced the waste. Many cases of grievous hardship came to his
notice. Widows, whose only means of support for themselves and
their little children was their salary, were thrown upon the
street in order that rapacious politicians might secure places
for their henchmen. Roosevelt might plead, but the politician
remained obdurate. What was the tragic lot of a widow and
starving children compared with keeping promises with greedy
"heelers"? Roosevelt saw that there was no redress except through
the extension of the classified service. This he urged at all
times, and ten years later, when he was himself President, he
added more than fifty thousand offices to the list of those which
the spoilsmen could not clutch.
He served six years as Civil Service Commissioner, being
reappointed in 1892 by President Cleveland. The overturn in
parties which made Cleveland President for the second time,
enabled Roosevelt to watch more closely the working of the Reform
System and he did what he could to safeguard those Government
employees who were Republicans from being ousted for the benefit
of Democrats. In general, he believed in laying down certain
principles on the tenure of office and in standing resolutely by
them. Thus, in 1891, under Harrison, on being urged to retain
General Corse, the excellent Democratic Postmaster of Boston, he
replied to his friend Curtis Guild that Corse ought to be
continued as a matter of principle and not because Cleveland,
several years before, had retained Pearson, the Republican
Postmaster of New York, as an exception.
At the end of six years, Roosevelt felt that he had worked on the
Commission long enough to let the American people understand how
necessary it was to maintain and extend the Merit System in the
Civil Service. A sudden access of virtue had just cast out the
Tammany Ring in New York City and set up Mr. Strong, a Reformer,
as Mayor. He wished to secure Roosevelt's help and Roosevelt was
eager to give it. The Mayor offered him the headship of the
Street Cleaning Department, but this he declined, not because he
thought the place beneath him, but because he lacked the
necessary scientific qualifications, and Mayor Strong, was lucky
in finding for it the best man in the country, Colonel George E.
Waring. Accordingly, the Mayor ap pointed Roosevelt President of
the Board of Police Commissioners, and he accepted.
The Police System in New York City in 1895, when Roosevelt took
control, was a monstrosity which, in almost every respect, did
exactly the opposite from what the Police System is organized to
do. Moral values had been so perverted that it took a strong man
to hold fast to the rudimentary distinctions between Good and
Evil. The Police existed, in theory, to protect the lives and
property of respectable citizens; to catch law-breakers and hand
them over to the courts for punishment; to hunt down gamblers,
swindlers, and all the other various criminals and purveyors of
vice. In reality, the Police under Tammany abetted crime and
protected the vicious. This they did, not because they had any
special hostility to Virtue--they probably knew too little about
it to form a dispassionate opinion any way--but because Vice paid
better. They held the cynical view that human nature will always
breed a great many persons having a propensity to licentious or
violent habits; that laws were made to check and punish these
persons, and that they might go their pernicious ways unmolested
if the Police took no notice of them. So the Police established a
system of immunity which anybody could enjoy by paying the price.
Notorious gambling-hells "ran wide open" after handing the
required sum to the high police official who extorted it.
Hundreds of houses of ill-fame carried on their hideous traffic
undisturbed, so long as the Police Captain of the district
received his weekly bribe. Gangs of roughs, toughs, and gunmen
pursued their piratical business without thinking of the law, for
they shared their spoils with the supposed officers of the law.
And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived
with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected
from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a
system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not
deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked
downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost
barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the way might be
clear. This simply meant that the firm which wished to use the
sidewalk for its private advantage paid the policeman on that
beat, and he looked the other way. As there was an ordinance
against almost every conceivable thing, so the Police had a price
for making every ordinance a dead letter. Was this a cosmic joke,
a nightmare of cynicism, a delusion? No, New York was classed in
the reference books as a Christian city, and this was its
Christianity.
Roosevelt knew the seamless bond which connected the crime and
vice of the city with corrupt politics. The party Bosses,
Republicans and Democrats alike, were the final profiters from
police blackmail and bribery. As he held his mandate from a
Reform Administration, he might expect to be aided by it on the
political side; at least, he did not fear that the heads of the
other departments would secretly work to block his purification
of the Police. A swift examination showed him that the New York
Police Department actually protected the criminals and promoted
every kind of iniquity which it existed to put down. It was as if
in a hospital which should cure the sick, the doctors, instead of
curing disease, should make the sick worse and should make the
well sick. How was Roosevelt, equally valiant and honest, to
conquer this Hydra? He took the straight way dictated by common
sense. First of all, he gained the confidence and respect of his
men. He said afterwards, that even at its worst, when he went
into office, the majority of the Police wanted to do right; that
their instincts were loyal; and this meant much, because they
were tempted on all sides by vicious wrongdoers; they had
constantly before them the example of superiors who took bribes
and they received neither recognition nor praise for their own
worthy deeds.
The Force came very soon to understand that under Roosevelt every
man would get a "square deal." "Pulls" had no efficacy. The Chief
Commissioner personally kept track of as many men as he could.
When he saw in the papers one morning that Patrolman X had saved
a woman from drowning, he looked him up, found that the man had
been twenty-two years in the service, had saved twenty five
lives, and had never been noticed, much less thanked, by the
Commission. More than this, he had to buy his own uniform, and as
this was often rendered unfit for further use when he rescued
persons from drowning, or from a burning house, his heroism cost
him much in dollars and cents. By Roosevelt's orders the
Department henceforth paid for new uniforms in such cases, and it
awarded medals. By recognizing the good, and by weeding out as
fast as possible the bad members of the Force, Roosevelt thus
organized the best body of Police which New York City had ever
seen. There were, of course, some black sheep among them whom he
could not reach, but he changed the fashion, so that it was no
longer a point of excellence to be a black sheep.
Roosevelt rigorously enforced the laws, without regard to his
personal opinion. It happened that at that time the good people
of New York insisted that liquor saloons should do no business on
Sundays. This prohibition had long been on the statute book, but
it had been generally evaded because the saloon keepers had paid
the Bosses, who controlled the Police Department, to let them
keep open--usually by a side door--on Sundays. Indeed, the
statute was evidently passed by the Bosses in order to widen
their opportunity for blackmail; but in this they overreached
themselves. For the liquor-sellers at last revolted, and they
held conferences with the Bosses--David B. Hill was then the
Democratic State Boss and Richard Croker the Tammany Boss - and
they published in the Wine and Spirit Gazette, their organ, this
statement: "An agreement was made between the leaders of Tammany
Hall and the liquor-dealers, according to which the monthly
blackmail paid to the force should be discontinued in return for
political support." Croker and his pals, taking it as a matter of
course that the public knew their methods, neither denied this
incriminating statement nor thought it worth noticing. For a
while all the saloons enjoyed equal immunity in selling drinks on
Sunday. Then came Roosevelt and ordered his men to close every
saloon. Many of the bar-keepers laughed incredulously at the
patrol man who gave the order; many others flew into a rage. The
public denounced this attempt to strangle its liberties and
reviled the Police Chief as the would be enforcer of obsolescent
blue laws. But they could not frighten Roosevelt: the saloons
were closed. Nevertheless, even he could not prevail against the
overwhelming desire for drink. Crowds of virtuous citizens
preferred. an honest police force, but they preferred their beer
or their whiskey still more, and joined with the criminal
classes, the disreputables, and all the others who regarded any
law as outrageous which interfered with their personal habits.
Accordingly, since they could not budge Roosevelt, they changed
the law. A compliant local judge discovered that it was lawful to
take what drink you chose with a meal, and the result was that,
as Roosevelt describes it, a man by eating one pretzel might
drink seventeen beers.
Roosevelt himself visited all parts of the city and chiefly those
where Vice grew flagrant at night. The journalists, who knew of
his tours of inspection and were always on the alert for the
picturesque, likened him to the great Caliph who in similar
fashion investigated Baghdad, and they nicknamed him Haroun al
Roosevelt. He had for his companion Jacob Riis, a remarkable Dane
who migrated to this country in youth, got the position of
reporter on one of the New York dailies, frequented the courts,
studied the condition of the abject poor in the tenement-houses,
and the haunts where Vice breeds like scum on stagnant pools, and
wrote a book, "How the Other Half Lives," which startled the
consciences of the well-to-do and the virtuous. Riis showed
Roosevelt everything. Police headquarters were in Mulberry
Street, and yet within a stone's throw iniquity flourished. He
guided him through the Tenderloin District, and the wharves, and
so they made the rounds of the vast city. More than once
Roosevelt surprised a shirking patrolman on his beat, but his
purpose they all knew was to see justice done, and to keep the
officers of the Force up to the highest standard of duty.
One other anecdote concerning his experience as Police
Commissioner I repeat, because it shows by what happy touches of
humor he sometimes dispersed menacing clouds. A German
Jew-baiter, Rector Ahlwardt, came over from Berlin to preach a
crusade against the Jews. Great trepidation spread through the
Jewish colony and they asked Roosevelt to forbid Ahlwardt from
holding public meetings against them. This, he saw, would make a
martyr of the German persecutor and probably harm the Jews more
than it would help them. So Roosevelt bethought him of a device
which worked perfectly. He summoned forty of the best Jewish
policemen on the Force and ordered them to preserve order in the
hall and prevent Ahlwardt from being interrupted or abused. The
meeting passed off without disturbance; Ahlwardt stormed in vain
against the Jews; the audience and the public saw the humor of
the affair and Jew-baiting gained no foothold in New York City.
Although Roosevelt thoroughly enjoyed his work as Police
Commissioner, he felt rightly that it did not afford him the
freest scope to exercise his powers. Much as he valued executive
work, the putting into practice and carrying out of laws, he felt
more and more strongly the desire to make them, and his instinct
told him that he was fitted for this higher task. When,
therefore, the newly elected Republican President, William
McKinley, offered him the apparently modest position of Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, he accepted it.
There was general grieving in New York City--except among the
criminals and Tammany--at the news of his resignation. All sorts
of persons expressed regrets that were really sincere, and their
gratitude for the good which he had done for them all. Some of
them protested that he ought not to abandon the duty which he had
discharged so valiantly. One of these was Edwin L. Godkin, editor
of The Nation and the New York Evening Post, a critic who seldom
spoke politely of anything except ideals which had not been
attained, or commended persons who were not dead and so beyond
reach of praise.
Since Roosevelt himself has quoted this passage from Godkin's
letter to him, I think it ought to be reprinted here: "I have a
concern, as the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief
that in New York you are doing the greatest work of which any
American today is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the
country the spectacle of a very important office administered by
a man of high character in the most efficient way amid a thousand
difficulties. As a lesson in politics I cannot think of anything
more instructive."
Godkin was a great power for good, in spite of the obvious
unpopularity which an incessant critic cannot fail to draw down
upon himself. The most pessimistic of us secretly crave a little
respite when for half an hour we may forget the circumambient and
all-pervading gloom: music, or an entertaining book, or a dear
friend lifts the burden from us. And then comes our
uncompromising pessimist and chides us for our softness and for
letting ourselves be led astray from our pessimism. His jeremiads
are probably justified, and as the historian looks back he finds
that they give the truest statement of the past; for the present
must be very bad, indeed, if it does not discover conditions
still worse in the past from which it has emerged. But Godkin
living could not escape from two sorts of unsympathetic
depreciators: first, the wicked who smarted under his just
scourge, and next, the upright, who tired of unremittent censure,
although they admitted that it was just.
Roosevelt came, quite naturally, to set the doer above the
critic, who, he thought, quickly degenerated into a fault finder
and from that into a common scold. When a man plunges into a
river to save somebody from drowning, if you do not plunge in
yourself, at least do not jeer at him for his method of swimming.
So Roosevelt, who shrank from no bodily or moral risk himself,
held in scorn the "timid good," the " acidly cantankerous," the
peace-at-any-price people, and the entire tribe of those who,
instead of attacking iniquities and abuses, attacked those who
are desperately engaged in fighting these, For this reason he
probably failed to absorb from Godkin's criticism some of the
benefit which it might have brought him. The pills were bitter,
but salutary. While he was Police Commissioner one of Joseph
Choate's epigrams passed current and is still worth recalling.
When some one remarked that New York was a very wicked city,
Choate replied, "How can you expect it to be otherwise, when Dana
makes Vice so attractive in the Sun every morning, and Godkin
makes Virtue so odious in the Post every afternoon?" Charles A.
Dana, the editor of the Sun, the stanch supporter of Tammany
Hall, and the apologist of almost every evil movement for nearly
thirty years, was a writer of diabolical cleverness whose
newspaper competed with Godkin's among the intellectual readers
in search of amusement. At one time, when Godkin had been
particularly caustic, and the Mugwumps at Harvard were unusually
critical, Roosevelt attended a committee meeting at the
University. After talking with President Eliot, he went and sat
by a professor, and remarked, play fully, "Eliot is really a good
fellow at heart. Do you suppose that, if he bit Godkin, it would
take?" So Roosevelt went back to Washington to be henceforth, as
it proved, a national figure whose career was to be forever
embedded in the structural growth of the United States.