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CHAPTER  FOUR 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIME
LEGISLATURE—THIRD TERM

in the State election of 1883 the Republicans secured a majority in both houses of the Legislature. Roosevelt was reelected, in spite of the opposition of some of the party machine leaders of his district whose interests and schemes he had antagonized. It was quite generally admitted that his course in the two preceding Legislatures had been the chief influence in causing the Democratic defeat. One of the most influential of the Republican newspapers outside the city of New York said: "It should not be forgotten that Theodore Roosevelt led the Republican minority in the last Assembly and that the minority has grown into a powerful majority. Much of the success of the Republicans in the recent elections was due to the record made by these legislators in opposition to Democratic schemes of extravagance and corruption. Much of that record was due to the sleepless activity of their intrepid leader, Theodore Roosevelt. He led the minority to victory, and it is only fitting that he should now receive a grateful acknowledgment of his services by being elevated to the Speakership."
He frankly declared himself a candidate for Speaker and received the warm support of all except the most avowedly partisan of the Republican journals of the State. But from the outset of the canvass, the old leaders of the party who represented the interests, which he had antagonized in his fearless opposition to "deals" with Tammany Hall and other disreputable partisan doings, formed a combination against him and in the end adroitly compassed his defeat. They brought this about by having the most discredited of the machine leaders in his district pretend to support him till the vote in caucus was reached, when they deserted him and nominated the rival candidate.
The Speaker thus chosen soon revealed his obligations to the members of the combination to which he owed his election. He could not refuse to appoint Roosevelt to the chairmanship of the Committee on Cities, but in placing him there he associated him with a body of men who were known not to be in harmony with his views and who could be depended upon to hinder rather than help him in work of great importance which he had avowed his intention to undertake. Once again, the newspapers that had persistently assailed him since his appearance in public life, indulged joyfully in prophecy of his ruin, either as accomplished or speedily to ensue. "This will not be a Happy New Year to the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt," said the chief of them, "but Mr. Roosevelt is comparatively young, and time is a kind physician." This prophet was not long in discovering that this year was destined to be, if not the happiest of Roosevelt’s life thus far, the most active and most useful of his Legislative career.
The Speaker, in addition to "packing" the Committee on Cities against Roosevelt, sought to thrust upon him a clerk whom he had not chosen and did not desire, but energetic personal protest persuaded the Speaker to abandon his purpose. It soon became apparent that, whatever might be the predilections of the members of the Committee, the chairman had views of his own and was determined to put them into practice. His first act was to introduce two measures of great importance to New York City, one giving the Mayor absolute power of appointment and removal of heads of departments, abolishing the confirming power over such appointments exercised by the Board of Aldermen. The other was a High License bill, greatly increasing the liquor license fees in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants. Few measures could be devised that would be more certain to incur the bitter hostility of corrupt political interests than these two. Through their confirming powers, the Aldermen were able to thwart all efforts for good government of the city that a Mayor might make. They would confirm the appointment only of men of their own sort and a worse sort could not be imagined. They gave a bad Mayor full excuse for all objectionable selections that he might make for he could always say that no others would be confirmed. In regard to high license, the politicians of both parties catered to and were in close alliance with the liquor-dealers, and viewed with wrath and alarm any measure that threatened to disrupt those relations.
Closely following the organization of the Legislature, special committees were appointed in both houses to investigate municipal departments in the city of New York. Roosevelt was placed at the head of the Assembly Committee and he entered at once upon the task assigned to it with enthusiasm and determination. There had been many such committees in the past but few of them had accomplished much of permanent value, for the reason that as soon as- they began to make revelations that were damaging to the city's rulers, the political machinery of both parties was put in operation to "call them off," that is, stop the inquiry or sidetrack it into comparatively harmless channels. An attempt was made at the outset to establish a check on the Assembly Committee by a proposal to have it work jointly with the Senate Committee. Roosevelt defeated this by flatly declining the proposal, a proceeding which was fully justified by the obvious fact that the Senate Committee had been made up, not for a genuine investigation, but for one of the old kind.
He took full control of the Assembly Committee from the start, and began at once to make revelations, which startled the city and ultimately attracted the attention of the country. Various well-established devices were tried by the disreputable politicians of both parties to arrest his progress, but for the first time in the history of legislative investigations they failed utterly because of his vigilance in foreseeing and thwarting them. Within a few weeks he had aroused such an overwhelming popular sentiment in Ms support that all efforts to hamper him ceased. His committee made a report summing up in the plain and vigorous language of its chairman the results of its labors and proposing for enactment seven measures of reform which provided for a complete change in the methods of city government, abolishing the old system under which the corrupt politicians of both parties had been robbing the city for many years. These became known as the Roosevelt reform bills. The city press, with a few insignificant exceptions, supported these measures. Great mass meetings of citizens were held to advocate their passage as well as that of the bill abolishing the confirming powers of the Aldermen and that decreeing high liquor licenses. In the end, the seven, as well as the Aldermanic measure, were passed, but the High License bill, although favored by the Church Temperance Society and the leading Protestant clergymen of the city, failed of final passage. This was many years before the appearance of the prohibition wave, which later swept over the country and Roosevelt’s position at the time was in harmony with that held by the great body of temperance advocates.
In addition to the city reform bills, Roosevelt succeeded in securing the passage of a civil service bill, applying the provisions of the national Civil Service law to all cities of the State having a population of 20,000 or more. A desperate effort was made to have the police force of New York City exempted from the provisions of the law, but Roosevelt defeated this by investigating the Police Department and showing that the worst evils in the force were due to the practice of making appointments to it on political influence alone. He tried also to have the Police Department put under a single head and to abolish the Bureau of Elections, which was under the control of an expert Republican "dealer," the most pernicious and rascally specimen of his class and time, but the political mercenaries of the two parties, grievously crippled in their business as they were by the other Roosevelt reform bills, were able to rally sufficient strength to defeat these additional assaults.
   It is worth while, in order to show the high place which Roosevelt had won in public estimation during this third session, to quote a few of the comments which the press of all parties and shades of opinion, in New York and elsewhere, made upon him at the time. The Democratic journal, which had so often predicted his ruin and had informed him that his New Year was not to be a happy one, was one of the warmest in his praise. When his seven bills were before the Legislature, this journal said of him:
"Mr. Roosevelt, to whom the credit of the bills already passed or certain to pass is due, has displayed a boldness, directness and energy of which much older and more experienced politicians might well be proud. We are willing to accord honor wherever it is due. We only wish we had a Democratic House of Representatives at Washington as efficient and vigorous as the Republican State Legislature, and a Democratic Congressman as active, resolute and practical as Assemblyman Roosevelt."
Another city journal, which was later to become one of his most captious critics, spoke of his work in the Legislature as "influential and memorable," adding: "There have been no disagreements among the members of his Investigating Committee. He has been able to inspire his associates with something of his own zeal for reform, and has apparently had no difficulty in securing their complete faith in the fearless disinterestedness of his labors."
During the exciting scenes in the Legislature when the Roosevelt bills were on final passage, with all the "dealers" seeking, sometimes with the covert aid of the Speaker, to defeat them, the city newspapers placed their Albany despatches under such headlines as "A Big Day for Roosevelt"; "Under Roosevelt's Whip"; "Roosevelt's Brilliant Assault on Corruption"; "Theodore, the Cyclone Hero of the Assembly."
In sections of the country outside of New York State, the newspapers held up Roosevelt as a model for imitation by young men everywhere. A Boston journal said of his political career, "Though less than three years in length, it is long enough to show how much can be achieved by a young man of ability and integrity, who has the wit to organize practical reforms, the faculty to inspire others with his own faith in his measures, and the tact and persistency to secure their adoption by the requisite majority." Another journal in the same city called attention to a purely Rooseveltian method, which he followed throughout his career: "His example and career should stimulate others equally favorably situated to do something in the line where he has wrought so well. We never heard that Roosevelt sneered at American politics or affected to deride those engaged in the comparatively humble business of law-making. On the contrary, he has sought to elevate politics by turning it into right channels and has honored the office of State representative." Another New England journal said: "Mr. Roosevelt is rapidly making toward the front rank of leadership in New York. And his progress comes as the natural result of vigorous, effective and unimpeachably honest work for the city in which he dwells. He has been called a ' swell,' but it would be well if every State had just such swells who are not afraid of the people, know what they want and, more than that, know how to satisfy the popular desire for relief from municipal burdens."
A Philadelphia newspaper said: "The career of this young man, who has gone boldly and honorably into public life, ought to shame thousands who complain that politics are so dirty that no decent gentleman can engage in them.'' A "Western journal said: "Mr. Roosevelt, like William Pitt, is accused of the awful crime of being a young man. It is a very great pity that we have not some more young men like him in public life. Let them all come to the front and take part in the government.''
The weekly-illustrated journals broke out in full page cartoons of Roosevelt in various guises. One of them represented him with a huge pair of scissors clipping the claws of the Tammany Tiger; another as Ajax defying the corrupt influences behind police corruption; another as a woodman cutting down a huge tree of municipal graft and rascality; another represented him garbed as a policeman, entitled "Our New Watchman, Roosevelt," in the act of dismissing the political bosses. When Governor Cleveland signed the Roosevelt bills, Nast published a cartoon, representing Roosevelt standing with the bills before Cleveland, who was seated at his desk, pen in hand, in the act of signing. This was entitled " Reform without Bloodshed."
The action of the highest court of the State in regard to the constitutionality of a measure which he had succeeded in having made a law during his final term in the Legislature is worthy of special record here for reasons which will be stated presently. The measure, which had been proposed by the Cigar-Makers' Union, prohibited the manufacture of cigars in tenement houses. Roosevelt was appointed one of a committee of three to investigate conditions in tenement houses and see if the legislation was desirable. He made several visits to the houses in which the work was carried on, going sometimes with other members of the committee and at other times alone. What he saw convinced him that the legislation was not only desirable but vitally necessary if the children of the workers in question were to grow up fitted for the duties of American citizenship. He ardently championed the bill and persuaded Governor Cleveland to sign it, though it was a crudely drawn measure. When it was carried to the Court of Appeals, on a question of its constitutionality, the court in 1885, held that it was not a proper exercise of the police power, that it interfered with the profitable and free use of his property by the owner or his lessee, and that a constitutional guaranty was violated. In rendering its decision, the court said:
"It cannot be perceived how the cigar-maker is to be improved in his health or his morals by forcing him from his home and its hallowed associations and beneficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere."
As Roosevelt in his personal visits to the tenement houses had found that in nearly all cases the work had been carried on by men, women and children living, working, eating and sleeping in the' same rooms, sometimes in one room, and in one instance, by two families in one room, two women, two men, several children and an adult male boarder, his disgust and wrath at these remarks about "hallowed associations" and "beneficent influences of his home" were deep and abiding. He says in his 'Autobiography':
"It was this case which first waked me to a dim and partial understanding of the fact that the courts were not necessarily the best judges of what should be done to better social and industrial conditions. The judges who rendered this decision were well-meaning men. They knew nothing whatever of tenementhouse conditions; they knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and labor, of three fourths of their fellow-citizens in great cities. They knew legalism but not life . . . This decision completely blocked tenement-house reform legislation in New York for a score of years. It was one of the most serious set-backs which the cause of industrial and social progress and reform ever received."
Viewed in the light of his subsequent career the lasting impression that his legislative experience had made upon Roosevelt's mind can easily be traced. His early view that the laws of the land, as expounded in text books and classrooms and interpreted by lawyers and courts, operated often against rather than in favor of the attainment of justice, had been confirmed by that experience. This was the inevitable effect of his unsuccessful attempt to secure the impeachment of a judge notoriously guilty of improper dealings with a railway corporation, and equally so of the decision of the Court of Appeals upon the measure cited above. His course as President in regard to the regulation and control of great corporations, and his later views in regard to the recall of judicial decisions, were no new developments of opinion, but the logical result of many years of serious thought. Equally so was the stand which he took during his service as President and maintained with undiminished zeal afterwards, in favor of social and industrial betterment or reform. Whatever opinion may be held in regard to his course on these questions, no one can say truthfully that it was due to sudden impulse, or was inspired by a desire to gain temporary political capital. His conduct was based on precisely the same ideas and principles that had actuated his course in the Legislature many years earlier, and was inherent in the character of the man.