IN POLITICS
When he graduated from college Roosevelt was no longer in poor health.
His boxing and exercise in the gymnasium, and still more his outdoor
expeditions, and hunting trips in Maine, had made a well man of him. He
was yet to achieve strength and muscle, and his life in the West was to
give him the chance to do that.
His father died while he was in college and he was left, not rich, but
so well off that he might have lived merely amusing himself. He might
have spent his days in playing polo, hunting and collecting specimens
of animals. What he did during his life, in adding to men's knowledge
of the habits of animals, would have gained him an honorable place in
the history of American science, if he had done nothing else. So with
his writing of books. He earned the respect of literary men, and left
a longer list of books to his credit than do most authors, and on a
greater variety of subjects. But he was to do other and still more
important work than either of these things.
He believed in and quoted from one of the noblest poems ever written by
any man,--Tennyson's "Ulysses." And in this poem are lines which formed
the text for Roosevelt's life:
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life.
This was the doctrine of "the strenuous life" which he preached,-- and
practiced. It was to perform the hard necessary work of the world, not
to sit back and criticize. It was to do disagreeable work if it had to
be done, not to pick out the soft jobs. It was to be afraid neither of
the man who fights with his fists or with a rifle, nor of the man who
fights with a sneering tongue or a sarcastic pen.
To go into New York politics from 1880-1882 was, for a young man of
Roosevelt's place in life, just out of college, what most of his
friends and associates called "simply crazy." That young men of good
education no longer think it a crazy thing to do, but an honorable and
important one, is due to Theodore Roosevelt more than to any other one
man.
As he sat on the window-seat of his friend's room in Holworthy Hall,
that day, and said he was going to try to help the cause of better
government in New York, Mr. Thayer looked at him and wondered if he
were "the real thing." Thirty-nine years later Mr. Thayer looked back
over the career of his college mate, and knew that he had talked that
day with one of the great men of our Republic, with one who, as another
of his college friends says, was never a "politician" in the bad sense,
but was always trying to advance the cause of better government.
The reason why it seemed to many good people a crazy thing to go into
politics was that the work was hard and disagreeable much of the time.
Politics were in the hands of saloon-keepers, toughs, drivers of street
cars and other "low" people, as they put it. The nice folk liked to
sit at home, sigh, and say: "Politics are rotten." Then they wondered
why politics did not instantly become pure. They demanded "reform" in
politics, as Roosevelt said, as if reform were something which could
be handed round like slices of cake. Their way of getting reform, if
they tried any way at all, was to write letters to the newspapers,
complaining about the "crooked politicians," and they always chose the
newspapers which those politicians never read and cared nothing about.
If any decent man did go into politics, hoping to do some good, these
same critics lamented loudly, and presently announced their belief that
he, too, had become crooked. If it were said that he had been seen with
a politician they disliked, or that he ate a meal in company with one,
they were sure he had gone wrong. They seemed to think that a reformer
could go among other officeholders and do great work, if he would only
begin by cutting all his associates dead, and refusing to speak to them.
It was a fortunate day for America when Theodore Roosevelt joined the
Twenty-first District Republican Club, and later when he ran for the
New York State Assembly from the same district. He was elected in
November, 1881. This was his beginning in politics.
In the Assembly at Albany, he presently made discoveries. He learned
something about the crooked politicians whom the stay-at-home reformers
had denounced from afar. He found that the Assembly had in it many good
men, a larger number who were neither good nor bad, but went one way
or another just as things happened to influence them at the moment.
Finally, there were some bad men indeed. He found that the bad men were
not always the poor, the uneducated, the men who had been brought up
in rough homes, lacking in refinement. On the contrary, he found some
extremely honest and useful men who had had exactly such unfavorable
beginnings.
Also, he soon discovered that there were, in and out of politics, some
men of wealth, of education, men who boasted that they belonged to the
"best families," who were willing to be crooked, or to profit from
other men's crooked actions. He soon announced this discovery, which
naturally made such men furious with him. They pursued him with their
hatred all his life. Some people really think that great wealth makes
crime respectable, and if it is pointed out to a wealthy but dishonest
man, that he is merely a common thief, and if in addition, the fact is
proved to everybody's satisfaction, his anger is noticeable.
Along with his serious work in the Assembly, Roosevelt found that there
was a great deal of fun in listening to the debates on the floor, or
the hearings in committees. One story, which he tells, is of two Irish
Assemblymen, both of whom wished to be leader of the minority. One, he
calls the "Colonel," the other, the "Judge." There was a question being
discussed of money for the Catholic Protectory, and somebody said that
the bill was "unconstitutional." Mr. Roosevelt writes:
The Judge, who knew nothing--of the constitution, except that it
was continually being quoted against all of his favorite projects,
fidgetted about for some time, and at last jumped up to know if he
might ask the gentleman a question. The latter said "Yes," and the
Judge went on, "I'd like to know if the gintleman has ever personally
seen the Catholic Protectoree?" "No, I haven't," said his astonished
opponent. "Then, phwat do you mane by talking about its being
unconstitootional? It's no more unconstitootional than you are!" Then
turning to the house with slow and withering sarcasm, he added, "The
throuble wid the gintleman is that he okkipies what lawyers would
call a kind of a quasi-position upon this bill," and sat down amid
the applause of his followers.
His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained altogether too much glory
from the encounter, and after the nonplussed countryman had taken
his seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the elated Judge,
looked at him majestically for a moment, and said, "You'll excuse
my mentioning, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down knows
more law in a wake than you do in a month; and more than that, Mike
Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin' Latin on the flure of this
House, _when you don't know the alpha and omayga of the language_!"
and back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated submission behind
him.[3]
[3] "American Ideals," p. 93.
Another story also relates to the "Colonel." He was presiding at a
committee meeting, in an extremely dignified and severe state of
mind. He usually came to the meetings in this mood, as a result
of having visited the bar, and taken a number of rye whiskies. The
meeting was addressed by "a great, burly man ... who bellowed as if
he had been a bull of Bashan."
The Colonel, by this time pretty far gone, eyed him malevolently,
swaying to and fro in his chair. However, the first effect of the
fellow's oratory was soothing rather than otherwise, and produced the
unexpected result of sending the chairman fast asleep bolt upright.
But in a minute or two, as the man warmed up to his work, he gave a
peculiar resonant howl which waked the Colonel up. The latter came to
himself with a jerk, looked fixedly at the audience, caught sight of
the speaker, remembered having seen him before, forgot that he had
been asleep, and concluded that it must have been on some previous
day. Hammer, hammer, hammer, went the gavel, and--
"I've seen you before, sir!"
"You have not," said the man.
"Don't tell me I lie, sir!" responded the Colonel, with sudden
ferocity. "You've addressed this committee on a previous day!"
"I've never--" began the man; but the Colonel broke in again:
"Sit down, sir! The dignity of the chair must be preserved! No man
shall speak to this committee twice. The committee stands adjourned."
And with that he stalked majestically out of the room, leaving the
committee and the delegation to gaze sheepishly into each other's
faces.[4]
[4] "American Ideals," p. 96.
There was in the Assembly a man whom Mr. Roosevelt calls "Brogan."
He looked like a serious elderly frog. I never heard him speak more
than once. It was before the Legislature was organized, or had
adopted any rules; and each day the only business was for the clerk
to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the following
dialogue occurred:
Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k!
The Clerk. The gentleman from New York.
Brogan. I rise to a point of ordher under the rules!
The Clerk. There are no rules.
Brogan. Thin I object to them.
The Clerk. There are no rules to object to.
Brogan. Oh! (nonplussed; but immediately recovering himself.) Thin I
move that they be amended until there ar-r-re![5]
[5] "Autobiography," p 99.
Roosevelt was three times elected to the Assembly. He took an interest
in laws to reform the Primaries and the Civil Service, and he demanded
that a certain corrupt judge be removed. This astonished the Assembly,
for the judge had powerful and rich friends. His own party advised the
twenty-three years old Assemblyman to sit down and shut his mouth. The
judge might be corrupt, as it was charged, but it was "wiser" to keep
still about it. Roosevelt, they said, was "rash" and "hot-headed" to
make trouble. And they refused to hear him.
But he got up next day, and the next, and the next after that, and
demanded that the dishonest judge be investigated. And on the eighth
day, his motion was carried by a vote of 104 to 6. The politicians saw
to it that the judge escaped, but it was shown that Roosevelt's charges
were true ones. And New York State found that she had an Assemblyman
with a back-bone.
Roosevelt carried some bills for the cause of better government through
the Assembly and they were signed by a courageous and honest Governor,
named Grover Cleveland. Thomas Nast, America's great cartoonist of
those days, drew a cartoon of the two men together. Cleveland was
forty-four and Roosevelt was twenty-three.
One of the most important events while he was in the Assembly arose
from a bill to regulate the manufacture of cigars in New York City.
He had found that cigars were often made under the most unhealthy
surroundings in the single living room of a family in a tenement. In
one house which he investigated himself, there were two families, and a
boarder, all living in one room, while one or more of the men carried
on the manufacture of cigars in the same room. Everything about the
place was filthy, and both for the health of the families and of the
possible users of the cigars, it was necessary to have this state of
affairs ended.
He advocated a bill which passed, and was signed by Governor Cleveland,
forbidding such manufacture. So far, so good; but there were persons
who found that the law was against their interests. They succeeded
in getting the Court of Appeals to set the law aside, and in their
decision the judges said the law was an assault upon the "hallowed
associations" of the home!
This made Roosevelt wake to the fact that courts were not always the
best judges of the living conditions of classes of people with whom
they had no contact They knew the law; they did not know life. The
decision blocked tenement house reform in New York for twenty years,
and was one more item in Roosevelt's political education.