Chapter 2

[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 thehealth 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.

CHAPTER IV

“RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAIL”

Atthe end of Mr. Roosevelt’s membership in the New York Assembly, he began his life on a ranch in North Dakota. In this way he not only learned much about the Western people, but came to know the ranchman’s life, and to have his first chance to shoot big game.

He had married Miss Lee in 1880, the autumn of the year he left college. Less than four years afterwards his wife died, following the birth of a daughter. His mother died on the next day, and Roosevelt under the sorrow of these two losses, left New York, and spent almost all his time on his ranch, the Elkhorn, at Medora.

The people in Dakota looked on this Eastern tenderfoot with a little amusement, and, at first, probably with some contempt. He was, to their minds, a “college dude” from the East, and moreover he wore eyeglasses. To some of the people whom he met, this fact, he says, was enough to cause distrust. Eyeglasses were under suspicion.

But, with two men who had been his guides inMaine, Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow, he began his life as a ranchman and a cow-puncher, and went through all the hard work and all the fun. He took long rides after cattle, rounded them up and helped in the branding. He followed the herd when it stampeded in a thunderstorm. He hunted all the game that there was in the county, and also acted as Deputy Sheriff and helped clear the place of horse-thieves and “bad men.”

In one of his adventures Roosevelt showed that he had taken to heart the celebrated advice which, in Hamlet, Polonius gives to his son:

BewareOf entrance to a quarrel, but being in,Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Mulvaney, in one of Kipling’s stories, proved that he knew something about Shakespeare, for he put this advice into his own language so as to express the meaning perfectly:

“Don’t fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint.”

Roosevelt tried to keep out of the fight,—but this is the way it happened. He was out after lost horses, and had to put up at a little hotel where there were no rooms downstairs, but a bar, adining-room and a kitchen. It was late at night, and there was trouble on, for he heard one or two shots in the bar as he came up. He disliked the idea of going in, but it was cold outside and there was nowhere else to go. Inside the bar, a cheap “bad man” was walking up and down with a cocked revolver in each hand. He had been shooting at the clock, and making every one unhappy and uncomfortable.

When Roosevelt came in, he called him “Four eyes,” because he wore spectacles, and announced “Four eyes is going to set up the drinks.” Roosevelt tried to pass it off by laughing, and sat down behind the stove to escape notice, and keep away from trouble. But the “bad man” came and stood over him, a gun in each hand, using foul language, and insisting that “Four eyes” should get up and treat.

“Well,” Roosevelt reluctantly remarked, “if I’ve got to, I’ve got to!” As he said this, he rose quickly, and hit the gun-man with his right fist on the point of the jaw, then with his left, and again with his right. The guns went off in the air, as the “bad man” went over like a nine-pin, striking his head on the corner of the bar as he fell. Roosevelt was ready to drop on him if he moved, for he still clutched the revolvers. But he was senseless.

The other people in the bar recovered their nerve, once the man was down. They hustled him out into the shed, and there was no more trouble from him.

Roosevelt hunted geese and ducks, deer, mountain sheep, elk and grizzly bear during his stay in the West. It was still possible to find buffalo, although most of the great herds had vanished. The prairie was covered with relics of the dead buffalo, so that one might ride for hundreds of miles, seeing their bones everywhere, but never getting a glimpse of a live one. Yet he managed, after a hard hunt of several days, to shoot a great bull buffalo.

An encounter with a grizzly bear is much more exciting, and he was nearly killed by one bear. In later years Roosevelt killed almost every kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the earth,—lions, elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros. The Indian tiger is perhaps the only one of the large savage animals which he never encountered. Yet after meeting all these and having some close shaves, especially with a wounded elephant in Africa, he said that his narrowest escape was with this grizzly bear.

It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in Idaho. He had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they partedcompany, and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a valley, from a rocky ridge, he saw a dark object, which he discovered was a large grizzly bear. He fired, and the bear giving a loud grunt, as the bullet struck, rushed forward at a gallop into a laurel thicket. Roosevelt paused at the edge of the thicket and peered within, trying to see the bear, but knowing too much about them to go into the brush where he was.

When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly towards me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.[6]

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.[6]

[6]“The Wilderness Hunter,” pp. 305-6.

Courtesy Scribner’s and Sons.THEODORE ROOSEVELT WHEN HE WAS 10 YEARS OLD

Courtesy Scribner’s and Sons.

There were, once, near Mr. Roosevelt’s ranch, three men who had been suspected of cattle-killing and horse-stealing. The leader was a tall fellow named Finnegan, who had long red hair reaching to his shoulders, and always wore a broad hat and a fringed buckskin shirt. He had been in a number of shooting scrapes. The others were a half-breed, and a German, who was weak and shiftless rather than actively bad. They had a bad reputation, and were trying to get out of the country before the Vigilance Committee got them.

About the only way to travel—it was early in March and the rivers were swollen—was byboat down the river. So when the cowboys on Mr. Roosevelt’s ranch found that his boat was stolen, they were sure who had taken it. As it is every man’s duty in a half-settled country to bring law-breakers to justice, and as Roosevelt was, moreover, Deputy Sheriff, he decided to go after the three thieves. Two of his cowboys, Sewall and Dow from Maine, in about three days built another boat. In this, with their rifles, food enough for two weeks, warm bedding and thick clothes, Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow set out down the Little Missouri River.

There had been a blizzard, the weather was still bitterly cold, and the river full of drifting ice. They shot prairie fowl and lived on them, with bacon, bread and tea. It was cold work poling and paddling down the river, with the current, but against a head wind. The ice froze on the pole handles. At night where they camped the thermometer went down to zero. Next day they shot two deer, for they needed meat, as they were doing such hard work in the cold.

On the third day they sighted smoke,—the campfire of the three thieves. Two boats, one of them the stolen one, were tied up to the bank. It was an exciting moment, for they expected a fight. As it turned out, however, it was a tough job, but not a fighting one. The German wasalone in camp, and they captured him without trouble. The other two were out hunting. When they came back an hour or two later, they were surprised by the order to hold up their hands. The half-breed obeyed at once, Finnigan hesitated until Roosevelt walked in close, covering him with a rifle, and repeated the command. Then he gave up.

But this was only the beginning of a long, hard task. It was often the way to shoot such men at once, but Sheriff Roosevelt did not like that. He was going to bring them back to jail. At night the thieves could not be tied up, as they would freeze to death. So Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow had to take turns in watching them at night. After they started down river again, they found the river blocked by ice, and had to camp out for eight days in freezing weather. The food all but gave out, and at last there was nothing left but flour. Bread made out of flour and muddy water and nothing else, is not, says Mr. Roosevelt, good eating for a steady diet. Besides they had to be careful of meeting a band of Sioux Indians, who were known to be in the region.

At last they worked back to a ranch, borrowed a pony, on which Roosevelt rode up into the mountains to a place where there was a wagon. He hired this, with two broncos and a driver.Sewall and Dow took the boats down the river, while Roosevelt set out on a journey which took two days and a night, walking behind the wagon, and guarding the three men. The driver of the wagon was a stranger.

At night they put up at a frontier hut, and the Deputy Sheriff had to sit up all night to be sure the three prisoners did not escape. When he reached the little town of Dickinson, and handed the men over to the Sheriff, he had traveled over three hundred miles. He had brought three outlaws to justice, and done something for the cause of better government in the country where he lived.

CHAPTER V

TWO DEFEATS

Althoughhe was still under twenty-five when he left the New York Assembly, Roosevelt was favorably known throughout the State. He had been heard of, by those who keep up with politics, all over the country. In 1884, the year of a Presidential election, he was one of the four delegates-at-large from New York to the Republican convention at Chicago. The leader for the Presidential nomination was James G. Blaine, a brilliant man who had many warm admirers. Also, there were many in his own party, who distrusted him, who thought that in the past he had not been strictly honest. Good men differed on this question and differ still.

Roosevelt favored Senator Edmunds of Vermont, but he had agreed beforehand, with other young Republican delegates, that they would support for the election the man named by the convention. Since, in later years, Roosevelt refused to abide by the decision of a party convention, and led one of the most extraordinary “bolts” inthe history of American politics, it is important to consider for a moment the question of political parties and the attitude a man may take toward them.

Because parties are responsible for a good many small, mean, and sometimes dishonorable acts, we often hear parties and partisanship denounced. People express the wish that there might be an end to “party politics” and to “partisanship,” and that “all good men might get together” for the good of the whole country. This may happen when there is Heaven on earth, but not before. Even the good and honest men continue to differ about which is the wisest way to do things, and so the people who think the same way about most matters get together in a party. The suggestion, by the way, that people should give up “partisanship” often comes from people who do not by any means intend to give up their own partisanship,—they wish other folk to come over to their own way of thinking. We are all apt to wish that others would only be reasonable enough to agree withus.

Nor is it at all sure that everything would be fine if there were no parties. Countries which have tried to do without parties, have not made a great success of it. There must be some organized group to hold responsible if men in office dobadly; some people to warn that the things they are doing are not approved by the majority of the people.

With parties in existence, as they have been for almost all of our history as a nation, there are in the main, four ways in which a man may act toward them. He may be a hidebound party man, always voting the party ticket, and swallowing the party platforms whole. Such persons often get into the newspapers when they are elderly, as having voted for every candidate on this or that party ticket for fifty or sixty or seventy years. It simply means, of course, that these men are proud of the fact that they let other people do their thinking for them.

Or, a man may look upon a party as the means through which he may secure better government. He is proud of its wise and good acts, and is willing to forgive its mistakes, because he knows that no large group of men can be perfect. He believes in remaining loyal to his party as long as possible, but he does not set it above his country, nor agree to follow it when it goes absolutely wrong, or falls into the hands of men who hold party welfare above patriotism. Roosevelt was a party man of this kind.

Furthermore, a man may be an Independent, one who will not join any party for long. Manyof these are highly honorable and wise citizens, who are of great value to the country, although they can usually be nothing but helpers in any good cause. Their position nearly always prevents their becoming the chief actors in bringing about any good and desirable reform.

The fourth class in which a man may find himself in regard to parties, is that of the so-called independent, who mistakes his own fussiness for nobility of character. He can find fault with everybody and every party, but he can be loyal to none. He is strong on leaving a party for the smallest excuse; never on staying with it. It is as if a member of a foot-ball team, half an hour before the game, should refuse to play, because some other member of the team had once cheated in an examination. He satisfies his own conscience, but he fails in the loyalty he owes to the team and its friends.

At the convention in 1884 Roosevelt took an important part for so young a man. He made speeches and worked for Senator Edmunds, but Mr. Blaine was nominated. This caused a split in the party, and many of its members joined the Democrats. They were called by their opponents “Mugwumps,” and since they believed they were acting for the best, they did not mind being called that or any other name.

So many prominent and able Republicans joined the Mugwumps it is sometimes forgotten that many more equally good and wise Republicans refused to “bolt,” but stayed with the party and voted for Mr. Blaine. Either they did not at all believe the charges which had been made against him—and it is as impossible now as it was then to prove the charges—or else they thought that the country would be far worse off with the Democratic party in power than with the Republicans successful.

Mr. Roosevelt was disgusted with the result of the convention, but did not believe that he was justified in leaving the party. He therefore stayed in it, and supported Mr. Blaine.

The Democrats nominated the courageous Governor of New York, Grover Cleveland. Both before and after this, he and Mr. Roosevelt worked together for measures of good government, and respected each other, while belonging to different parties. The presidential election turned out to be close, and in the end several incidents besides the split in the Republican party worked against Blaine. He was narrowly defeated. The change of a few hundred votes in the State of New York would have made Blaine the President. As in later years large election frauds were discovered to have been going on in New York, some peoplecontend with good show of reason, that Blaine and not Cleveland was really the choice of the voters.

Two years after this, in 1886, when Roosevelt was on his Dakota ranch, the Republicans nominated him for Mayor of New York City. He was about twenty-eight years old, and it is evident that he had made a mark in politics. He came East, accepted the nomination, and made the campaign.

The opponents were, first, Abram S. Hewitt, a respectable candidate nominated by Tammany Hall in its customary fashion of offering a good man, now and then, to pull the wool over the eyes of persons who naturally need some excuse for voting to put New York into the hands of the political organization whose existence has always been one of America’s greatest disgraces.

The other candidate was Henry George, a man of high character, nominated by the United Labor Party. Mr. Hewitt was elected, with Mr. George second and Mr. Roosevelt third.

About a month after the election, Mr. Roosevelt went to England, where he married Miss Edith Kermit Carow, of New York. She had been his friend and playmate when he was a boy, and was his sister’s friend. The groomsman was a young Englishman, Mr. Cecil Spring-Rice. Years later the groom and his “best man” came togetheragain in Washington, when the American was President Roosevelt, and the Englishman was Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States.

CHAPTER VI

FIGHTING OFFICE-SEEKERS

Totell the story of Roosevelt’s life it is necessary to talk much about politics, and that to some people is a dull subject. But he was in political office over twenty years of his life, always interested and active in politics, and the vigor which he brought to his duties made public affairs attractive to thousands of Americans who had felt little concern about them.

This alone was a great service. If a man is going the wrong way in political life, if he is trying to do unwise or evil things, he is a danger, but a danger which may be corrected. He may be made to turn his efforts in useful directions. But the man who takes no interest at all in the government of his city, state or nation, who is so feeble that he cannot even take the time to vote on election day, but goes hunting or fishing instead,—this man is a hopeless nuisance, who does not deserve the liberty which he enjoys, nor the protection which his government gives him.

Politics, when Mr. Roosevelt was active, werenot dull. Few men have ever made them so lively and interesting. Every activity in life meant something to him, a chance for useful work or for good fun. He had a perfectly “corking time,” he said, when he was President, and the words shocked a number of good people who had pardoned or overlooked dirty actions by other public men, so long as these other men kept up a certain copy-book behavior which they thought was “dignity.”

It is a question if any man ever had a better time, ever had more real fun in his life, than did Mr. Roosevelt. In spite of the hard work he put in, in spite of long days and weeks of drudgery he knew how to get happiness out of every minute. He did not engage in drinking and gambling for his amusements. He did not adopt a priggish attitude on these matters,—he simply knew that there were other things which were better sport. He was a religious man, a member all his life of his father’s church, but religion did not sour him, make him gloomy, or cause him to interfere with other people about their belief or lack of it.

He got an immense amount of pleasure in his family life, in half a dozen kinds of athletic sports, especially the ones which led him outdoors, and in books. In these things he was marvelously wise or marvelously fortunate. Some men’s lives arespent indoors, in an office or in a study among books. Their amusements are indoor games, and they come to despise or secretly to envy, the more fortunate men who live outdoors.

Some of the outdoors men, on the other hand, become almost as one-sided. Knowing nothing of the good fun that is in books they deny themselves much pleasure, and take refuge in calling “high-brows” the men who have simply more common sense and capacity for enjoyment than themselves.

Mr. Roosevelt, more than most men of his time, certainly more than any other public man, could enjoy to the utmost the best things the world has in it. He knew the joy of the hard and active life in the open, and he knew the keen pleasure of books. So when he returned to America after his marriage in 1886, he built a house on Sagamore Hill at Oyster Bay on Long Island. Here he could ride, shoot, row, look after his farm, and here in the next year or two he wrote two books. One was the life of Gouverneur Morris, American minister to France in the early years of our nation; the other a life of Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri.

But he was not long to stay out of political office. In 1888 President Cleveland had been defeated for reelection by the Republican candidate,Benjamin Harrison. The new President appointed Mr. Roosevelt as one of the Civil Service Commissioners, with his office in Washington.

Most politicians are charged, certainly Mr. Roosevelt was sometimes charged, with being a selfish seeker after personal advancement. There is not much on which to base this argument in Mr. Roosevelt’s acceptance of this office. For the man who is looking out merely for his own ambitions, for his own success in politics, is careful of the position he takes, careful to keep out of offices where there are many chances to make enemies. The Civil Service Commission was, of all places at that time, the last where a selfish politician would like to be. Nobody could do his duties there and avoid making enemies. It was a thankless job, consisting of trying to protect the public interests against a swarm of office-seekers and their friends in Congress.

It is ridiculous now to remember what a fight had to be waged to set up the merit system of the Civil Service in this country. The old system, by which a good public servant was turned out to make room for a hungry office-seeker of the successful political party, was firmly established. Men and women were not appointed to office because they knew anything about the work they were to do, but because they were cousins of aCongressman’s wife, or political heelers who had helped to get the Congressman elected. Nobody thought of the offices as places where, for the good of the whole country, it was necessary to have the best men. Instead, the offices were looked on as delicious slices of pie to be grabbed and devoured by the greediest and strongest person in sight.

The Civil Service Commission, when Mr. Roosevelt became a member, had been established by Congress, but it was hated and opposed by Congress and the Commission was still fought, secretly or openly. Congressmen tried to ridicule it, to hamper it by denials of money, and to overrule it in every possible way. A powerful Republican Congressman and a powerful Democratic Senator tried to browbeat Roosevelt, and were both caught by him in particularly mean lies. Naturally they did not enjoy the experience.

At the end of his term, President Harrison was defeated by Mr. Cleveland, who came back again to the Presidency. He re-appointed Mr. Roosevelt, who thus spent six years in the Commission. When he retired he had made a good many enemies among the crooked politicians, and some friends and admirers among well-informed men who watch the progress of good government. He was still unknown to the great body of citizens throughout the country, although he had been fighting their fight for six years.

Mr. Roosevelt as a Hunter in his Ranching Days

He went from Washington to accept another thankless and still more difficult position in New York City. It was one which had been fatal to political ambitions, and was almost certain to end the career of any man who accepted it. This was the Presidency of the Board of Police Commissioners.

CHAPTER VII

POLICE COMMISSIONER

Experiencedpoliticians always warn young men who wish to rise in politics, who wish to hold high office in the state or national government, to keep out of city politics. It is a graveyard for reputations, and it was that in 1895, when Roosevelt took charge of the New York Police, even more than to-day.

Between the unreasonable reformers, who expect perfection, arrived at in their own way; the sensible folk who demand an honest government; the lax and easy-going people who do not care how much rottenness there is about, so that it is kept partly covered up (and this is one of the largest classes) and the plain criminals who are out for graft and plunder, the city office-holder is torn in a dozen ways at once.

If he is dishonest or weak, he goes under immediately. If he is honest, but lacking in perfect courage, he is nearly useless. And if he is both honest and brave, but has not good brains, is not able to use his mind quickly and well, he is eitherhelpless, or soon placed in a position where he seems to have been dishonorable. For, of course the first method which a crooked man uses to destroy his honest opponent, is to try to make him look crooked, too. Often during his life Roosevelt insisted upon the fact that a man in public life must not only be honest, but that he must have a back-bone and a good head into the bargain.

Nothing but a sense of public duty, nothing but a desire to help the cause of better government, could have made a man take the Police Commissionership in 1895. Mayor Strong, on a Reform ticket, had beaten Tammany Hall. He wanted an able and energetic man and so sent for Roosevelt. The condition of the Police Department sounds more like a chapter from a dime novel gone mad, than from any real state of things which could exist in a modern city. Yet it did exist.

The police were supposed to protect the city against crime. What they really did was to stop some of the crime—when the criminal had no “pull”—and to protect the rest of it. The criminal handed over a certain amount of his plunder to the police, and they let him go on with his crime. More than that, they saw that no one bothered him. There was a regular scale of prices for things varying all the way from seriouscrime down to small offenses. It cost more to be a highway robber, burglar, gun-man or murderer, for instance, than merely to keep a saloon open after the legal time for closing. A man had to pay more for running a big gambling-house, than simply for blocking the sidewalk with rubbish and ash-cans.

Roosevelt found that most of the policemen were honest, or wished to be honest. But, surrounded as they were by grafters, it was almost impossible for a man to keep straight. If he began by accepting little bribes, he ended, as he rose in power, by taking big ones, and finally he was in partnership with the chief rascals. The hideous system organized by the powerful men in Tammany Hall spread outward and downward, and at last all over the city. Roosevelt did not stop all the crime, of course, nor leave the city spotless when he ended his two years service. But he did make it possible for one of his chief opponents, one of the severest of all critics, Mr. Godkin, a newspaper editor, to write him, at the end of his term of office:

“In New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American to-day 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.”[7]

[7]Thayer, “Theodore Roosevelt,” p. 106.

How did he do this? First, he tried to keep politics out of the police-force,—to appoint men because they would make good officers, not because they were Republicans or Democrats. Next, he tried to reward and promote policemen who had proved themselves brave,—who had saved people in burning houses or from drowning, or had arrested violent men at great danger to themselves. This is commonly done in the New York Police Department to-day: it was not so common before 1895. Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners found one old policeman who had saved twenty-five people from drowning and two or three from burning buildings. They gave him his first promotion. He began to have the Department pay for a policeman’s uniform when it was torn in making an arrest or otherwise ruined in the performance of duty. Before, the policeman had had to pay for a new uniform himself. He had each policeman trained to use a pistol, so that if he had to fire it at a criminal, he would hit the criminal, and not somebody else. He did his best to stop the custom of selling beer and whiskeyto children. Finally he stopped disrespect for law by having law enforced, whether people liked it or not.

Of course, this got him into hot water. One of our worst faults in America lies in passing a tremendous number of laws, and then letting them be broken. In many instances the worst troubles are with laws about strong drink. People in the State, outside of New York City, and some of those in the City, wished to have a law to close the saloons on Sunday. So they passed it. But so few people in the City really wished such a law, so many of them wished to drink on Sunday, that the saloons stayed open, and the saloon-keepers paid bribes to the police for “protection.” The result was not temperance, but the opposite. Moreover it led to disrespect for the law, and corruption for the police. It was not Commissioner Roosevelt’s business whether the law was a wise one or not, but it was his business to enforce it.

He enforced it, and had the saloons closed. As he said: "The howl that rose was deafening. The professional politicians raved. The yellow-press surpassed themselves in clamor and mendacity. A favorite assertion was that I was enforcing a ‘blue law,’ an obsolete law that had never before been enforced. As a matter of fact, I was enforcinghonestly a law that had hitherto been enforced dishonestly."[8]

[8]“Autobiography,” p. 210.

In the end, those who wished to drink on Sundays found a way to do it, and the law intended to regulate drinking habits failed, as such laws nearly always have done. A judge decided that as drink could be served with meals, a man need only eat one sandwich or a pretzel and he could then drink seventeen beers, or as many as he liked. But the result of Roosevelt’s action had nearly stopped bribe-giving to the police. So there was something gained.

Roosevelt went about the city at night, sometimes alone, sometimes with his friend Jacob Riis, a reporter who knew about police work and the slum districts of the city. If he caught policemen off their beat, they were ordered to report at his office in the morning and explain. When his friends were dancing at fashionable balls, he was apt to be looking after the police outside.

From about this time, Roosevelt began to be known all over the United States. He had been heard of ever since he was in the Assembly, but only by those who follow politics closely. Now, New York newspapers, with their cartoons, began to make him celebrated everywhere. The factthat when he spoke emphatically, he showed his teeth for an instant, was enlarged upon in pictures and in newspaper articles, and it became connected with him henceforth.

We demand amusing newspapers; we like the fun in every subject brought out as no other nation does. And we get it. Our newspapers are by far the brightest and most readable in the world. But we have to pay for it, and we often pay by having the real truth concealed from us in a mass of comedy. Newspapers seize upon a man or woman who has something amusing in his life, manner, or speech, and play upon that peculiarity until at last the true character of the person is hidden.

This happened with Roosevelt. About the time of his Police Commissionership, the newspaper writers and artists began to invent a grotesque and amusing character called “Teddy,” who was forever snapping his teeth, shouting “Bully!” or rushing at everybody, flourishing a big stick. This continued for years and was taken for truth by a great many people. To this day, this imaginary person is believed in by thousands. And in the meantime, the genuine man, a brave high-minded American, loving his country ardently, and serving her to the utmost of his great strengthand ability, was engaged in his work, known by all who had personal contact with him to be stern indeed against evil-doers, but tender and gentle to the unfortunate, to women and children and to animals.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROUGH RIDER

In1897 the Republican Party came again into power; Mr. McKinley was inaugurated as President. Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and came with his family to Washington. The Secretary of the Navy was Mr. John D. Long.

America was within a year of getting into war, and as usual was not ready for it. There are men so foolish as to rejoice because we have never been ready for the wars in which we have taken part about every twenty or thirty years in our history. This simply means that they rejoice at the unnecessary deaths of thousands of other Americans who die from disease in camp, or are killed in the field through neglect to prepare in advance. Preparation for war is not wholly the matter of having weapons ready to fight the enemy. It also means healthy camps for our soldiers to live in, and readiness to furnish clothing, food and medical supplies. For lack of these,thousands of our friends and relatives die in every war we are in.

A rebellion had been going on in Cuba for years. The cruel government of Spain had kept the Cubans in misery and in rebellion, and disturbed the friendship between Spain and the United States. It was our duty to see that Cuban expeditions did not sail from our coast to help their friends, and in this work a great many ships of our Navy were busy all the time. Nobody liked to have to do this for we naturally sympathized with the Cubans, who were making such a brave fight against stupid and tyrannical governors sent from Spain. One of the last of these was particularly bad. He herded the Cuban people into camps where they died of disease and starvation, and he had great numbers of them shot without mercy. We had justly revolted against the mis-government of King George III in 1776, but nothing that King George’s governors and generals had done to us was as bad as the things the Spaniards were doing in Cuba, in 1896 and 1897.

Many of the men in Washington felt that war would come sooner or later. Roosevelt believed it and worked constantly to have the Navy ready. He had the support of the President and of Secretary Long in nearly everything that he proposed, and so was able to do some useful work. It is important to understand what Roosevelt thoughtabout war, not only about this, but about all wars. Here it is in his own words.

I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals, I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor.[9]

[9]“Autobiography,” p. 226.

You will be able to see from what he did while he was President, when he was in a position where he could have plunged the country into war half a dozen times, whether these words were true, or whether he was really the fire-eater which some of his enemies insisted he was.

He secured from Congress nearly a million dollars, to permit the Navy to engage in target-practice. To those who were alarmed at such “waste,” he remarked that gun-powder was meant to be burned, and that sailors must learn to shoot, since in battle, the shots that hit are the only ones that count. There is nothing wonderful about such remarks. In looking back at themthere seems to be nothing wonderful about many things that he said and did. They are merely examples of plain, common-sense, and it appears ridiculous that anybody should have had to make such remarks, or to fight hard to get such clearly necessary things done. Yet he did have to fight for them. It had to be driven into the heads of some of the men in Congress that it is not the proper use of gun-powder to keep it stored up, until war is declared, then bring it out, partly spoiled, and give it to soldiers and sailors, who for lack of practice, do not know how to shoot straight.

Roosevelt also was able to help in having appointed to command the Asiatic squadron, a naval officer named Commodore George Dewey.

On February 15, 1898, while affairs were at their worst between America and Spain, our battleshipMainewas blown up in Havana Harbor. She had gone there on a friendly visit, but now was destroyed and sent to the bottom. Over two hundred and fifty of our men were killed. Almost every one knew that war was now certain. For weeks the country debated as to the cause of the explosion which sank theMaine, and the matter was investigated by naval officers assisted by divers. They found that the explosion had comefrom the outside. Somebody had set off a mine or torpedo beneath the ship. Nobody in America disputed this, except a few of the peace-at-any-price folk, who preferred to think that the carelessness of our own sailors had been the cause. These gentlemen always think the best of the people of other nations, which is a fine thing; but they are always ready to believe the worst of their own countrymen, which is, on the whole, rather a nasty trait.

Roosevelt worked at top-speed in the Navy Department, and began to lay plans for going to the war himself. He believed that it was right and necessary to fight Spain, and end the horrible suffering in Cuba. And he believed that it was the duty first and foremost of men like himself, who advised war, to take part in it. He was nearly forty years old, and had a family. Many other men in his place would have discovered that their services were most important in Washington. They would have stayed in their offices, and let other men (whom they called “jingoes”) do the fighting for them. It was never Roosevelt’s custom to act that way.

Later in February, while Mr. Long was away, and Roosevelt was Acting-Secretary of the Navy, he sent this cable message to Commodore Dewey:

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