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CHAPTER 3

PRACTICAL POLITICS

When I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. If I had been
sufficiently fortunate to come under Professor Thayer, of the Harvard
Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer
can do a great work for justice and against legalism.

But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of the teaching of the
law books and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice.
The _caveat emptor_ side of the law, like the _caveat emptor_ side
of business, seemed to me repellent; it did not make for social fair
dealing. The "let the buyer beware" maxim, when translated into actual
practice, whether in law or business, tends to translate itself further
into the seller making his profit at the expense of the buyer, instead
of by a bargain which shall be to the profit of both. It did not seem
to me that the law was framed to discourage as it should sharp practice,
and all other kinds of bargains except those which are fair and of
benefit to both sides. I was young; there was much in the judgment which
I then formed on this matter which I should now revise; but, then as
now, many of the big corporation lawyers, to whom the ordinary members
of the bar then as now looked up, held certain standards which were
difficult to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose every
high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been obliged to earn
every cent I spent, I should have gone whole-heartedly into the business
of making both ends meet, and should have taken up the law or any other
respectable occupation--for I then held, and now hold, the belief that
a man's first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care of those
dependent upon him; and I then believed, and now believe, that the
greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily
married, and that no other form of success or service, for either man
or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative. But it
happened that I had been left enough money by my father not to make
it necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself and my
family. I had enough to get bread. What I had to do, if I wanted butter
and jam, was to provide the butter and jam, but to count their cost
as compared with other things. In other words, I made up my mind that,
while I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money the
secondary instead of the primary object of my career. If I had had
no money at all, then my first duty would have been to earn it in any
honest fashion. As I had some money I felt that my need for more money
was to be treated as a secondary need, and that while it was my business
to make more money where I legitimately and properly could, yet that it
was also my business to treat other kinds of work as more important than
money-making.

Almost immediately after leaving Harvard in 1880 I began to take an
interest in politics. I did not then believe, and I do not now believe,
that any man should ever attempt to make politics his only career. It
is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole
livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office. Such
a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while
in office, and always puts him under the heaviest strain of pressure to
barter his convictions for the sake of holding office. A man should have
some other occupation--I had several other occupations--to which he can
resort if at any time he is thrown out of office, or if at any time he
finds it necessary to choose a course which will probably result in
his being thrown out, unless he is willing to stay in at cost to his
conscience.

At that day, in 1880, a young man of my bringing up and convictions
could join only the Republican party, and join it I accordingly did.
It was no simple thing to join it then. That was long before the era of
ballot reform and the control of primaries; long before the era when we
realized that the Government must take official notice of the deeds and
acts of party organizations. The party was still treated as a private
corporation, and in each district the organization formed a kind of
social and political club. A man had to be regularly proposed for and
elected into this club, just as into any other club. As a friend of mine
picturesquely phrased it, I "had to break into the organization with a
jimmy."

Under these circumstances there was some difficulty in joining the local
organization, and considerable amusement and excitement to be obtained
out of it after I had joined.

It was over thirty-three years ago that I thus became a member of the
Twenty-first District Republican Association in the city of New York.
The men I knew best were the men in the clubs of social pretension
and the men of cultivated taste and easy life. When I began to make
inquiries as to the whereabouts of the local Republican Association and
the means of joining it, these men--and the big business men and lawyers
also--laughed at me, and told me that politics were "low"; that the
organizations were not controlled by "gentlemen"; that I would find them
run by saloon-keepers, horse-car conductors, and the like, and not by
men with any of whom I would come in contact outside; and, moreover,
they assured me that the men I met would be rough and brutal and
unpleasant to deal with. I answered that if this were so it merely meant
that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that
the other people did--and that I intended to be one of the governing
class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have
to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort
and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough
and tumble.

The Republican Association of which I became a member held its meetings
in Morton Hall, a large, barn-like room over a saloon. Its furniture was
of the canonical kind: dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end with
a table and chair and a stout pitcher for iced water, and on the walls
pictures of General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton, to whose generosity
we owed the room. We had regular meetings once or twice a month, and
between times the place was treated, at least on certain nights, as a
kind of club-room. I went around there often enough to have the men get
accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began
to speak the same language, and so that each could begin to live down in
the other's mind what Bret Harte has called "the defective moral quality
of being a stranger." It is not often that a man can make opportunities
for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the
opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them. This was what
happened to me in connection with my experiences in Morton Hall. I soon
became on good terms with a number of the ordinary "heelers" and even
some of the minor leaders. The big leader was Jake Hess, who treated
me with rather distant affability. There were prominent lawyers and
business men who belonged, but they took little part in the actual
meetings. What they did was done elsewhere. The running of the machine
was left to Jake Hess and his captains of tens and of hundreds.

Among these lesser captains I soon struck up a friendship with Joe
Murray, a friendship which is as strong now as it was thirty-three years
ago. He had been born in Ireland, but brought to New York by his parents
when he was three or four years old, and, as he expressed it, "raised as
a barefooted boy on First Avenue." When not eighteen he had enlisted in
the Army of the Potomac and taken part in the campaign that closed the
Civil War. Then he came back to First Avenue, and, being a fearless,
powerful, energetic young fellow, careless and reckless, speedily grew
to some prominence as leader of a gang. In that district, and at that
time, politics was a rough business, and Tammany Hall held unquestioned
sway. The district was overwhelmingly Democratic, and Joe and his
friends were Democrats who on election day performed the usual gang
work for the local Democratic leader, whose business it was to favor and
reward them in return. This same local leader, like many other greater
leaders, became puffed up by prosperity, and forgot the instruments
through which he had achieved prosperity. After one election he showed a
callous indifference to the hard work of the gang and complete disregard
of his before-election promises. He counted upon the resentment wearing
itself out, as usual, in threats and bluster.

But Joe Murray was not a man who forgot. He explained to his gang his
purposes and the necessity of being quiet. Accordingly they waited for
their revenge until the next election day. They then, as Joe expressed
it, decided "to vote furdest away from the leader"--I am using the
language of Joe's youth--and the best way to do this was to vote
the Republican ticket. In those days each party had a booth near the
polling-place in each election district, where the party representative
dispensed the party ballots. This had been a district in which, as a
rule, very early in the day the Republican election leader had his
hat knocked over his eyes and his booth kicked over and his ballots
scattered; and then the size of the Democratic majority depended on an
elastic appreciation of exactly how much was demanded from headquarters.
But on this day things went differently. The gang, with a Roman sense
of duty, took an active interest in seeing that the Republican was given
his full rights. Moreover, they made the most energetic reprisals on
their opponents, and as they were distinctly the tough and fighting
element, justice came to her own with a whoop. Would-be repeaters were
thrown out on their heads. Every person who could be cajoled or, I fear,
intimidated, was given the Republican ticket, and the upshot was that at
the end of the day a district which had never hitherto polled more than
two or three per cent of its vote Republican broke about even between
the two parties.

To Joe it had been merely an act of retribution in so far as it was not
simply a spree. But the leaders at the Republican headquarters did not
know this, and when they got over their paralyzed astonishment at the
returns, they investigated to find out what it meant. Somebody told
them that it represented the work of a young man named Joseph Murray.
Accordingly they sent for him. The room in which they received him was
doubtless some place like Morton Hall, and the men who received him were
akin to those who had leadership in Morton Hall; but in Joe's eyes
they stood for a higher civilization, for opportunity, for generous
recognition of successful effort--in short, for all the things that an
eager young man desires. He was received and patted on the back by a man
who was a great man to the world in which he lived. He was introduced
to the audience as a young man whose achievement was such as to
promise much for the future, and moreover he was given a place in the
post-office--as I have said, this was long before the day of Civil
Service Reform.

Now, to the wrong kind of man all this might have meant nothing at
all. But in Joe Murray's case it meant everything. He was by nature as
straight a man, as fearless and as stanchly loyal, as any one whom I
have ever met, a man to be trusted in any position demanding courage,
integrity, and good faith. He did his duty in the public service, and
became devotedly attached to the organization which he felt had given
him his chance in life. When I knew him he was already making his
way up; one of the proofs and evidences of which was that he owned a
first-class racing trotter--"Alice Lane"--behind which he gave me more
than one spin. During this first winter I grew to like Joe and his
particular cronies. But I had no idea that they especially returned the
liking, and in the first row we had in the organization (which arose
over a movement, that I backed, to stand by a non-partisan method of
street-cleaning) Joe and all his friends stood stiffly with the machine,
and my side, the reform side, was left with only some half-dozen votes
out of three or four hundred. I had expected no other outcome and took
it good-humoredly, but without changing my attitude.

Next fall, as the elections drew near, Joe thought he would like to make
a drive at Jake Hess, and after considerable planning decided that his
best chance lay in the fight for the nomination to the Assembly, the
lower house of the Legislature. He picked me as the candidate with whom
he would be most likely to win; and win he did. It was not my fight, it
was Joe's; and it was to him that I owe my entry into politics. I had
at that time neither the reputation nor the ability to have won the
nomination for myself, and indeed never would have thought of trying for
it.

Jake Hess was entirely good-humored about it. In spite of my being
anti-machine, my relations with him had been friendly and human, and
when he was beaten he turned in to help Joe elect me. At first they
thought they would take me on a personal canvass through the saloons
along Sixth Avenue. The canvass, however, did not last beyond the first
saloon. I was introduced with proper solemnity to the saloon-keeper--a
very important personage, for this was before the days when
saloon-keepers became merely the mortgaged chattels of the brewers--and
he began to cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who
was dealing with a suppliant for his favor. He said he expected that I
would of course treat the liquor business fairly; to which I answered,
none too cordially, that I hoped I should treat all interests fairly.
He then said that he regarded the licenses as too high; to which I
responded that I believed they were really not high enough, and that
I should try to have them made higher. The conversation threatened to
become stormy. Messrs. Murray and Hess, on some hastily improvised plea,
took me out into the street, and then Joe explained to me that it was
not worth my while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better
go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, and that
he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue. I was triumphantly
elected.

Once before Joe had interfered in similar fashion and secured the
nomination of an Assemblyman; and shortly after election he had grown
to feel toward this Assemblyman that he must have fed on the meat which
rendered Caesar proud, as he became inaccessible to the ordinary mortals
whose place of resort was Morton Hall. He eyed me warily for a
short time to see if I was likely in this respect to follow in my
predecessor's footsteps. Finding that I did not, he and all my other
friends and supporters assumed toward me the very pleasantest attitude
that it was possible to assume. They did not ask me for a thing. They
accepted as a matter of course the view that I was absolutely straight
and was trying to do the best I could in the Legislature. They desired
nothing except that I should make a success, and they supported me with
hearty enthusiasm. I am a little at a loss to know quite how to express
the quality in my relationship with Joe Murray and my other friends of
this period which rendered that relationship so beneficial to me. When I
went into politics at this time I was not conscious of going in with
the set purpose to benefit other people, but of getting for myself a
privilege to which I was entitled in common with other people. So it was
in my relationship with these men. If there had lurked in the innermost
recesses of my mind anywhere the thought that I was in some way a
patron or a benefactor, or was doing something noble by taking part
in politics, or that I expected the smallest consideration save what
I could earn on my own merits, I am certain that somehow or other the
existence of that feeling would have been known and resented. As a
matter of fact, there was not the slightest temptation on my part to
have any such feeling or any one of such feelings. I no more expected
special consideration in politics than I would have expected it in the
boxing ring. I wished to act squarely to others, and I wished to be able
to show that I could hold my own as against others. The attitude of my
new friends toward me was first one of polite reserve, and then that of
friendly alliance. Afterwards I became admitted to comradeship, and then
to leadership. I need hardly say how earnestly I believe that men should
have a keen and lively sense of their obligations in politics, of their
duty to help forward great causes, and to struggle for the betterment of
conditions that are unjust to their fellows, the men and women who are
less fortunate in life. But in addition to this feeling there must be a
feeling of real fellowship with the other men and women engaged in the
same task, fellowship of work, with fun to vary the work; for unless
there is this feeling of fellowship, of common effort on an equal plane
for a common end, it will be difficult to keep the relations wholesome
and natural. To be patronized is as offensive as to be insulted. No one
of us cares permanently to have some one else conscientiously striving
to do him good; what we want is to work with that some one else for the
good of both of us--any man will speedily find that other people can
benefit him just as much as he can benefit them.

Neither Joe Murray nor I nor any of our associates at that time were
alive to social and industrial needs which we now all of us recognize.
But we then had very clearly before our minds the need of practically
applying certain elemental virtues, the virtues of honesty and
efficiency in politics, the virtue of efficiency side by side with
honesty in private and public life alike, the virtues of consideration
and fair dealing in business as between man and man, and especially as
between the man who is an employer and the man who is an employee.
On all fundamental questions Joe Murray and I thought alike. We never
parted company excepting on the question of Civil Service Reform, where
he sincerely felt that I showed doctrinaire affinities, that I sided
with the pharisees. We got back again into close relations as soon as
I became Police Commissioner under Mayor Strong, for Joe was then made
Excise Commissioner, and was, I believe, the best Excise Commissioner
the city of New York ever had. He is now a farmer, his boys have been
through Columbia College, and he and I look at the questions, political,
social, and industrial, which confront us in 1913 from practically the
same standpoint, just as we once looked at the questions that confronted
us in 1881.

There are many debts that I owe Joe Murray, and some for which he was
only unconsciously responsible. I do not think that a man is fit to do
good work in our American democracy unless he is able to have a
genuine fellow-feeling for, understanding of, and sympathy with his
fellow-Americans, whatever their creed or their birthplace, the section
in which they live, or the work which they do, provided they possess
the only kind of Americanism that really counts, the Americanism of the
spirit. It was no small help to me, in the effort to make myself a good
citizen and good American, that the political associate with whom I was
on closest and most intimate terms during my early years was a man born
in Ireland, by creed a Catholic, with Joe Murray's upbringing; just
as it helped me greatly at a later period to work for certain vitally
necessary public needs with Arthur von Briesen, in whom the spirit of
the "Acht-und-Vierziger" idealists was embodied; just as my whole life
was influenced by my long association with Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted
to call the best American I ever knew, although he was already a young
man when he came hither from Denmark.

I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881, and found myself
the youngest man in that body. I was reelected the two following
years. Like all young men and inexperienced members, I had considerable
difficulty in teaching myself to speak. I profited much by the advice
of a hard-headed old countryman--who was unconsciously paraphrasing
the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody
else. The advice ran: "Don't speak until you are sure you have something
to say, and know just what it is; then say it, and sit down."

My first days in the Legislature were much like those of a boy in a
strange school. My fellow-legislators and I eyed one another with mutual
distrust. Each of us chose his seat, each began by following the lead of
some veteran in the first routine matters, and then, in a week or two,
we began to drift into groups according to our several affinities. The
Legislature was Democratic. I was a Republican from the "silk stocking"
district, the wealthiest district in New York, and I was put, as one
of the minority members, on the Committee of Cities. It was a coveted
position. I did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know,
was put there merely because it was felt to be in accordance with the
fitness of things.

A very short experience showed me that, as the Legislature was then
constituted, the so-called party contests had no interest whatever for
me. There was no real party division on most of the things that were of
concern in State politics, both Republicans and Democrats being for and
against them. My friendships were made, not with regard to party
lines, but because I found, and my friends found, that we had the same
convictions on questions of principle and questions of policy. The only
difference was that there was a larger proportion of these men among the
Republicans than among the Democrats, and that it was easier for me at
the outset to scrape acquaintance, among the men who felt as I did, with
the Republicans. They were for the most part from the country districts.

My closest friend for the three years I was there was Billy O'Neill,
from the Adirondacks. He kept a small crossroads store. He was a young
man, although a few years older than I was, and, like myself, had won
his position without regard to the machine. He had thought he would
like to be Assemblyman, so he had taken his buggy and had driven around
Franklin County visiting everybody, had upset the local ring, and came
to the Legislature as his own master. There is surely something in
American traditions that does tend toward real democracy in spite of our
faults and shortcomings. In most other countries two men of as different
antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings as Billy O'Neill and I would
have had far more difficulty in coming together. I came from the biggest
city in America and from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from
a backwoods county where he kept a store at a crossroads. In all the
unimportant things we seemed far apart. But in all the important things
we were close together. We looked at all questions from substantially
the same view-point, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every
legislative fight during those three years. He abhorred demagogy just
as he abhorred corruption. He had thought much on political problems; he
admired Alexander Hamilton as much as I did, being a strong believer
in a powerful National government; and we both of us differed from
Alexander Hamilton in being stout adherents of Abraham Lincoln's views
wherever the rights of the people were concerned. Any man who has met
with success, if he will be frank with himself, must admit that there
has been a big element of fortune in the success. Fortune favored me,
whereas her hand was heavy against Billy O'Neill. All his life he had to
strive hard to wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant
fate; if fate had been but a little kinder, I believe he would have had
a great political career; and he would have done good service for the
country in any position in which he might have been put.

There were other Republicans, like Isaac Hunt and Jonas van Duzer and
Walter Howe and Henry Sprague, who were among my close friends and
allies; and a gigantic one-eyed veteran of the Civil War, a gallant
General, Curtis from St. Lawrence County; and a capital fellow, whom
afterwards, when Governor, I put on the bench, Kruse, from Cattaraugus
County. Kruse was a German by birth; as far as I know, the only German
from Cattaraugus County at that time; and, besides being a German, he
was also a Prohibitionist. Among the Democrats were Hamden Robb and
Thomas Newbold, and Tom Welch of Niagara, who did a great service in
getting the State to set aside Niagara Falls Park--after a discouraging
experience with the first Governor before whom we brought the bill, who
listened with austere patience to our arguments in favor of the State
establishing a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question,
"But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people's money when just as
much water will run over the Falls without a park as with it?" Then
there were a couple of members from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello
and Pete Kelly.

Mike Costello had been elected as a Tammany man. He was as fearless as
he was honest. He came from Ireland, and had accepted the Tammany Fourth
of July orations as indicating the real attitude of that organization
towards the rights of the people. A month or two in Albany converted him
to a profound distrust of applied Tammany methods. He and I worked
hand in hand with equal indifference to our local machines. His machine
leaders warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the next
election, which they did; but he possessed a seasoned-hickory toughness
of ability to contend with adverse circumstances, and kept his head well
above water. A better citizen does not exist; and our friendship has
never faltered.

Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, well-educated young
fellow, an ardent believer in Henry George. At the beginning he and I
failed to understand each other or to get on together, for our theories
of government were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent in
active contests with men whose theories had nothing whatever to do with
their practices, Kelly and I found in our turn that it really did not
make much difference what our abstract theories were on questions that
were not before the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual
matters before the Legislature, the most important of which involved
questions of elementary morality, we were heartily at one. We began to
vote together and act together, and by the end of the session found that
in all practical matters that were up for action we thought together.
Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his theories, so that even
in theory we were coming closer together. He was ardent and generous; he
was a young lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had tempted
him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses
under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really
wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly
defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and good faith,
and when the bosses refused him a renomination, he appealed from them
to the people. When we both came up for reelection, I won easily in my
district, where circumstances conspired to favor me; and Kelly, with
exactly the same record that I had, except that it was more creditable
because he took his stand against greater odds, was beaten in his
district. Defeat to me would have meant merely chagrin; to Kelly it
meant terrible material disaster. He had no money. Like every rigidly
honest man, he had found that going into politics was expensive and that
his salary as Assemblyman did not cover the financial outgo. He had lost
his practice and he had incurred the ill will of the powerful, so that
it was impossible at the moment to pick up his practice again; and
the worry and disappointment affected him so much that shortly after
election he was struck down by sickness. Just before Christmas some of
us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits that he and
his family would be put out into the street before New Year. This was
prevented by the action of some of his friends who had served with him
in the Legislature, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took
up the practice of his profession. But he was a broken man. In the
Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Democrats from
Brooklyn was the Speaker--Alfred C. Chapin, the leader and the foremost
representative of the reform Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported.
A few years later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brooklyn
on a reform Democratic ticket. Shortly after his election I was asked
to speak at a meeting in a Brooklyn club at which various prominent
citizens, including the Mayor, were present. I spoke on civic decency,
and toward the close of my speech I sketched Kelly's career for my
audience, told them how he had stood up for the rights of the people of
Brooklyn, and how the people had failed to stand up for him, and the way
he had been punished, precisely because he had been a good citizen who
acted as a good citizen should act. I ended by saying that the reform
Democracy had now come into power, that Mr. Chapin was Mayor, and that I
very earnestly hoped recognition would at last be given to Kelly for the
fight he had waged at such bitter cost to himself. My words created some
impression, and Mayor Chapin at once said that he would take care of
Kelly and see that justice was done him. I went home that evening much
pleased. In the morning, at breakfast, I received a brief note from
Chapin in these words: "It was nine last evening when you finished
speaking of what Kelly had done, and when I said that I would take care
of him. At ten last night Kelly died." He had been dying while I was
making my speech, and he never knew that at last there was to be a
tardy recognition of what he had done, a tardy justification for the
sacrifices he had made. The man had fought, at heavy cost to himself and
with entire disinterestedness, for popular rights; but no recognition
for what he had done had come to him from the people, whose interest he
had so manfully upheld.

Where there is no chance of statistical or mathematical measurement, it
is very hard to tell just the degree to which conditions change from one
period to another. This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with such
a matter as corruption. Personally I am inclined to think that in public
life we are on the whole a little better and not a little worse than we
were thirty years ago, when I was serving in the New York Legislature.
I think the conditions are a little better in National, in State, and in
municipal politics. Doubtless there are points in which they are worse,
and there is an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it does seem
to me as if, on the whole, things had slightly improved.

When I went into politics, New York City was under the control of
Tammany, which was from time to time opposed by some other--and
evanescent--city Democratic organization. The up-country Democrats had
not yet fallen under Tammany sway, and were on the point of developing a
big country political boss in the shape of David B. Hill. The Republican
party was split into the Stalwart and Half-Breed factions. Accordingly
neither party had one dominant boss, or one dominant machine, each being
controlled by jarring and warring bosses and machines. The corruption
was not what it had been in the days of Tweed, when outside individuals
controlled the legislators like puppets. Nor was there any such
centralization of the boss system as occurred later. Many of the members
were under the control of local bosses or local machines. But the
corrupt work was usually done through the members directly.

Of course I never had anything in the nature of legal proof of
corruption, and the figures I am about to give are merely approximate.
But three years' experience convinced me, in the first place, that there
were a great many thoroughly corrupt men in the Legislature, perhaps a
third of the whole number; and, in the next place, that the honest men
outnumbered the corrupt men, and that, if it were ever possible to get
an issue of right and wrong put vividly and unmistakably before them
in a way that would arrest their attention and that would arrest the
attention of their constituents, we could count on the triumph of the
right. The trouble was that in most cases the issue was confused. To
read some kinds of literature one would come to the conclusion that the
only corruption in legislative circles was in the form of bribery by
corporations, and that the line was sharp between the honest man who was
always voting against corporations and the dishonest man who was always
bribed to vote for them. My experience was the direct contrary of
this. For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor a
corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, and in this
case not intended to be passed) to blackmail corporations. The majority
of the corrupt members would be found voting for the blackmailing bills
if they were not paid, and would also be found voting in the interests
of the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, as they were
always called, the "strike" bills, could themselves be roughly divided
into two categories: bills which it would have been proper to pass,
and those that it would not have been proper to pass. Some of the bills
aimed at corporations were utterly wild and improper; and of these a
proportion might be introduced by honest and foolish zealots, whereas
most of them were introduced by men who had not the slightest intention
of passing them, but who wished to be paid not to pass them. The most
profitable type of bill to the accomplished blackmailer, however, was a
bill aimed at a real corporate abuse which the corporation, either from
wickedness or folly, was unwilling to remedy. Of the measures introduced
in the interest of corporations there were also some that were proper
and some that were improper. The corrupt legislators, the "black horse
cavalry," as they were termed, would demand payment to vote as the
corporations wished, no matter whether the bill was proper or improper.
Sometimes, if the bill was a proper one, the corporation would have the
virtue or the strength of mind to refuse to pay for its passage, and
sometimes it would not.

A very slight consideration of the above state of affairs will show
how difficult it was at times to keep the issue clear, for honest and
dishonest men were continually found side by side voting now against and
now for a corporation measure, the one set from proper and the other set
from grossly improper motives. Of course part of the fault lay in the
attitudes of outsiders. It was very early borne in upon me that almost
equal harm was done by indiscriminate defense of, and indiscriminate
attack on, corporations. It was hard to say whether the man who prided
himself upon always antagonizing the corporations, or the man who, on
the plea that he was a good conservative, always stood up for them, was
the more mischievous agent of corruption and demoralization.

In one fight in the House over a bill as to which there was a bitter
contest between two New York City street railway organizations, I saw
lobbyists come down on the floor itself and draw venal men out into the
lobbies with almost no pretense of concealing what they were doing.
In another case in which the elevated railway corporations of New York
City, against the protest of the Mayor and the other local authorities,
rushed through a bill remitting over half their taxes, some of the
members who voted for the measure probably thought it was right; but
every corrupt man in the House voted with them; and the man must
indeed have been stupid who thought that these votes were given
disinterestedly.

The effective fight against this bill for the revision of the elevated
railway taxes--perhaps the most openly crooked measure which during my
time was pushed at Albany--was waged by Mike Costello and myself. We
used to spend a good deal of time in industrious research into the
various bills introduced, so as to find out what their authors really
had in mind; this research, by the way, being highly unappreciated and
much resented by the authors. In the course of his researches Mike
had been puzzled by an unimportant bill, seemingly related to a
Constitutional amendment, introduced by a local saloon-keeper, whose
interests, as far as we knew, were wholly remote from the Constitution,
or from any form of abstract legal betterment. However, the measure
seemed harmless; we did not interfere; and it passed the House. Mike,
however, followed its career in the Senate, and at the last moment,
almost by accident, discovered that it had been "amended" by the
simple process of striking out everything after the enacting clause and
unobtrusively substituting the proposal to remit the elevated railway
taxes! The authors of the change wished to avoid unseemly publicity;
their hope was to slip the measure through the Legislature and have
it instantly signed by the Governor, before any public attention was
excited. In the Senate their plan worked to perfection. There was in
the Senate no fighting leadership of the forces of decency; and for such
leadership of the non-fighting type the representatives of corruption
cared absolutely nothing. By bold and adroit management the substitution
in the Senate was effected without opposition or comment. The bill (in
reality, of course, an absolutely new and undebated bill) then came back
to the House nominally as a merely amended measure, which, under the
rules, was not open to debate unless the amendment was first by vote
rejected. This was the great bill of the session for the lobby; and
the lobby was keenly alive to the need of quick, wise action. No public
attention whatever had so far been excited. Every measure was taken
to secure immediate and silent action. A powerful leader, whom the
beneficiaries of the bill trusted, a fearless and unscrupulous man,
of much force and great knowledge of parliamentary law, was put in the
chair. Costello and I were watched; and when for a moment we were out
of the House, the bill was brought over from the Senate, and the clerk
began to read it, all the black horse cavalry, in expectant mood, being
in their seats. But Mike Costello, who was in the clerk's room, happened
to catch a few words of what was being read. In he rushed, despatched a
messenger for me, and began a single-handed filibuster. The Speaker
pro tem called him to order. Mike continued to speak and protest;
the Speaker hammered him down; Mike continued his protests; the
sergeant-at-arms was sent to arrest and remove him; and then I bounced
in, and continued the protest, and refused to sit down or be silent.
Amid wild confusion the amendment was declared adopted, and the bill
was ordered engrossed and sent to the Governor. But we had carried our
point. The next morning the whole press rang with what had happened;
every detail of the bill, and every detail of the way it had been
slipped through the Legislature, were made public. All the slow and
cautious men in the House, who had been afraid of taking sides, now came
forward in support of us. Another debate was held on the proposal to
rescind the vote; the city authorities waked up to protest; the
Governor refused to sign the bill. Two or three years later, after much
litigation, the taxes were paid; in the newspapers it was stated that
the amount was over $1,500,000. It was Mike Costello to whom primarily
was due the fact that this sum was saved the public, and that the forces
of corruption received a stinging rebuff. He did not expect recognition
or reward for his services; and he got none. The public, if it knew of
what he had done, promptly forgot it. The machine did not forget it, and
turned him down at the next election.

One of the stand-by "strikes" was a bill for reducing the elevated
railway fare, which at that time was ten cents, to five cents. In
one Legislature the men responsible for the introduction of the bill
suffered such an extraordinary change of heart that when the bill
came up--being pushed by zealous radicals who really were honest--the
introducers actually voted against it! A number of us who had been very
doubtful about the principle of the bill voted for it simply because
we were convinced that money was being used to stop it, and we hated to
seem to side with the corruptionists. Then there came a wave of popular
feeling in its favor, the bill was reintroduced at the next session,
the railways very wisely decided that they would simply fight it on its
merits, and the entire black horse cavalry contingent, together with all
the former friends of the measure, voted against it. Some of us, who in
our anger at the methods formerly resorted to for killing the bill had
voted for it the previous year, with much heart-searching again voted
for it, as I now think unwisely; and the bill was vetoed by the then
Governor, Grover Cleveland. I believe the veto was proper, and those
who felt as I did supported the veto; for although it was entirely right
that the fare should be reduced to five cents, which was soon afterwards
done, the method was unwise, and would have set a mischievous precedent.

An instance of an opposite kind occurred in connection with a great
railway corporation which wished to increase its terminal facilities in
one of our great cities. The representatives of the railway brought
the bill to me and asked me to look into it, saying that they were well
aware that it was the kind of bill that lent itself to blackmail, and
that they wished to get it through on its merits, and invited the
most careful examination. I looked carefully into it, found that the
municipal authorities and the property-owners whose property was to be
taken favored it, and also found that it was an absolute necessity
from the standpoint of the city no less than from the standpoint of the
railway. So I said I would take charge of it if I had guarantees that no
money should be used and nothing improper done in order to push it. This
was agreed to. I was then acting as chairman of the committee before
which the bill went.

A very brief experience proved what I had already been practically sure
of, that there was a secret combination of the majority of the committee
on a crooked basis. On one pretext or another the crooked members of the
committee held the bill up, refusing to report it either favorably or
unfavorably. There were one or two members of the committee who were
pretty rough characters, and when I decided to force matters I was not
sure that we would not have trouble. There was a broken chair in the
room, and I got a leg of it loose and put it down beside me where it
was not visible, but where I might get at it in a hurry if necessary. I
moved that the bill be reported favorably. This was voted down without
debate by the "combine," some of whom kept a wooden stolidity of look,
while others leered at me with sneering insolence. I then moved that it
be reported unfavorably, and again the motion was voted down by the same
majority and in the same fashion. I then put the bill in my pocket and
announced that I would report it anyhow. This almost precipitated a
riot, especially when I explained, in answer to statements that my
conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Legislature, that in that
case I should give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the
men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for purposes
of blackmail. The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the
opportune production of the chair-leg had a sedative effect, and partly
owing to wise counsels from one or two of my opponents.

Accordingly I got the bill reported to the Legislature and put on the
calendar. But here it came to a dead halt. I think this was chiefly
because most of the newspapers which noticed the matter at all treated
it in such a cynical spirit as to encourage the men who wished to
blackmail. These papers reported the introduction of the bill, and said
that "all the hungry legislators were clamoring for their share of the
pie"; and they accepted as certain the fact that there was going to be a
division of "pie." This succeeded in frightening honest men, and also in
relieving the rogues; the former were afraid they would be suspected of
receiving money if they voted for the bill, and the latter were given a
shield behind which to stand until they were paid. I was wholly
unable to move the bill forward in the Legislature, and finally a
representative of the railway told me that he thought he would like
to take the bill out of my hands, that I did not seem able to get it
through, and that perhaps some "older and more experienced" leader could
be more successful. I was pretty certain what this meant, but of course
I had no kind of proof, and moreover I was not in a position to say that
I could promise success. Accordingly, the bill was given into the charge
of a veteran, whom I believe to have been a personally honest man, but
who was not inquisitive about the motives influencing his colleagues.
This gentleman, who went by a nickname which I shall incorrectly call
"the bald eagle of Weehawken," was efficient and knew his job. After a
couple of weeks a motion to put the bill through was made by "the
bald eagle"; the "black horse cavalry," whose feelings had undergone a
complete change in the intervening time, voted unanimously for it, in
company with all the decent members; and that was the end. Now here was
a bit of work in the interest of a corporation and in the interest of
a community, which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put
through on its merits. The blame for the failure lay primarily in the
supine indifference of the community to legislative wrong-doing, so long
as only the corporations were blackmailed.

Except as above mentioned, I was not brought in contact with big
business, save in the effort to impeach a certain judge. This judge
had been used as an instrument in their business by certain of the men
connected with the elevated railways and other great corporations at
that time. We got hold of his correspondence with one of these men, and
it showed a shocking willingness to use the judicial office in any way
that one of the kings of finance of that day desired. He had actually
held court in one of that financier's rooms. One expression in one of
the judge's letters to this financier I shall always remember: "I am
willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve your
vast interests." The curious thing was that I was by no means certain
that the judge himself was corrupt. He may have been; but I am inclined
to think that, aside from his being a man of coarse moral fiber, the
trouble lay chiefly in the fact that he had a genuine--if I had not
so often seen it, I would say a wholly inexplicable--reverence for
the possessor of a great fortune as such. He sincerely believed that
business was the end of existence, and that judge and legislator
alike should do whatever was necessary to favor it; and the bigger the
business the more he desired to favor it. Big business of the kind that
is allied with politics thoroughly appreciated the usefulness of such a
judge, and every effort was strained to protect him. We fought hard--by
"we" I mean some thirty or forty legislators, both Republicans and
Democrats--but the "black horse cavalry," and the timid good men, and
the dull conservative men, were all against us; and the vote in the
Legislature was heavily against impeachment. The minority of the
committee that investigated him, with Chapin at its head, recommended
impeachment; the argument for impeachment before the committee was made
by Francis Lynde Stetson.

It was my first experience of the kind. Various men whom I had known
well socially and had been taught to look up to, prominent business men
and lawyers, acted in a way which not only astounded me, but which I
was quite unable to reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their
high standing--I was little more than a year out of college at the time.
Generally, as has been always the case since, they were careful to avoid
any direct conversation with me on a concrete case of what we now
call "privilege" in business and in politics, that is, of the alliance
between business and politics which represents improper favors rendered
to some men in return for improper conduct on the part of others being
ignored or permitted.

One member of a prominent law firm, an old family friend, did, however,
take me out to lunch one day, evidently for the purpose of seeing just
what it was that I wished and intended to do. I believe he had a
genuine personal liking for me. He explained that I had done well in the
Legislature; that it was a good thing to have made the "reform play,"
that I had shown that I possessed ability such as would make me useful
in the right kind of law office or business concern; but that I must not
overplay my hand; that I had gone far enough, and that now was the time
to leave politics and identify myself with the right kind of people, the
people who would always in the long run control others and obtain the
real rewards which were worth having. I asked him if that meant that I
was to yield to the ring in politics. He answered somewhat impatiently
that I was entirely mistaken (as in fact I was) about there being merely
a political ring, of the kind of which the papers were fond of talking;
that the "ring," if it could be called such--that is, the inner
circle--included certain big business men, and the politicians, lawyers,
and judges who were in alliance with and to a certain extent dependent
upon them, and that the successful man had to win his success by the
backing of the same forces, whether in law, business, or politics.

This conversation not only interested me, but made such an impression
that I always remembered it, for it was the first glimpse I had of that
combination between business and politics which I was in after years so
often to oppose. In the America of that day, and especially among
the people whom I knew, the successful business man was regarded by
everybody as preeminently the good citizen. The orthodox books on
political economy, not only in America but in England, were written
for his especial glorification. The tangible rewards came to him, the
admiration of his fellow-citizens of the respectable type was apt to
be his, and the severe newspaper moralists who were never tired of
denouncing politicians and political methods were wont to hold up
"business methods" as the ideal which we were to strive to introduce
into political life. Herbert Croly, in "The Promise of American Life,"
has set forth the reasons why our individualistic democracy--which
taught that each man was to rely exclusively on himself, was in no way
to be interfered with by others, and was to devote himself to his own
personal welfare--necessarily produced the type of business man
who sincerely believed, as did the rest of the community, that the
individual who amassed a big fortune was the man who was the best and
most typical American.

In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were mainly problems
of honesty and decency and of legislative and administrative efficiency.
They represented the effort, the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to
get efficient and honest government. But as yet I understood little of
the effort which was already beginning, for the most part under very bad
leadership, to secure a more genuine social and industrial justice. Nor
was I especially to blame for this. The good citizens I then knew best,
even when themselves men of limited means--men like my colleague Billy
O'Neill, and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow--were no more awake
than I was to the changing needs the changing times were bringing.
Their outlook was as narrow as my own, and, within its limits, as
fundamentally sound.

I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, even though as
yet it was not broad enough. We were no respecters of persons. Where our
vision was developed to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we
opposed it whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found that
it needed much more courage to stand up openly against labor men when
they were wrong than against capitalists when they were wrong. The
sins against labor are usually committed, and the improper services to
capitalists are usually rendered, behind closed doors. Very often the
man with the moral courage to speak in the open against labor when it is
wrong is the only man anxious to do effective work for labor when labor
is right.

The only kinds of courage and honesty which are permanently useful to
good institutions anywhere are those shown by men who decide all cases
with impartial justice on grounds of conduct and not on grounds of
class. We found that in the long run the men who in public blatantly
insisted that labor was never wrong were the very men who in private
could not be trusted to stand for labor when it was right. We grew
heartily to distrust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless
it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that
type of "reformer" is as noxious now as he ever was. The loud-mouthed
upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied
with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how
flagrant, if committed nominally in the interest of labor, has either a
warped mind or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man.
It was largely the indignant and contemptuous dislike aroused in our
minds by the demagogues of this class which then prevented those of us
whose instincts at bottom were sound from going as far as we ought to
have gone along the lines of governmental control of corporations and
governmental interference on behalf of labor.

I did, however, have one exceedingly useful experience. A bill was
introduced by the Cigar-Makers' Union to prohibit the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses. I was appointed one of a committee of three
to investigate conditions in the tenement-houses and see if legislation
should be had. Of my two colleagues on the committee, one took no
interest in the measure and privately said he did not think it was
right, but that he had to vote for it because the labor unions were
strong in his district and he was pledged to support the bill. The
other, a sporting Tammany man who afterwards abandoned politics for the
race-track, was a very good fellow. He told me frankly that he had to be
against the bill because certain interests which were all-powerful and
with which he had dealings required him to be against it, but that I
was a free agent, and that if I would look into the matter he believed I
would favor the legislation. As a matter of fact, I had supposed I would
be against the legislation, and I rather think that I was put on the
committee with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were against
it; it was contrary to the principles of political economy of the
_laissez-faire_ kind; and the business men who spoke to me about it
shook their heads and said that it was designed to prevent a man doing
as he wished and as he had a right to do with what was his own.

However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question
made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of
practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the
continuance of the conditions which I saw. These conditions rendered
it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live
so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties
of American citizenship. I visited the tenement-houses once with
my colleagues of the committee, once with some of the labor union
representatives, and once or twice by myself. In a few of the
tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the
work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or
sleeping or living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however,
there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of
manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and
night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms--sometimes in one room.
I have always remembered one room in which two families were living. On
my inquiry as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was
a boarder with one of the families. There were several children,
three men, and two women in this room. The tobacco was stowed about
everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were
scraps of food. The men, women, and children in this room worked by day
and far on into the evening, and they slept and ate there. They were
Bohemians, unable to speak English, except that one of the children knew
enough to act as interpreter.

Instead of opposing the bill I ardently championed it. It was a poorly
drawn measure, and the Governor, Grover Cleveland, was at first doubtful
about signing it. The Cigar-makers' Union then asked me to appear before
the Governor and argue for it. I accordingly did so, acting as spokesman
for the battered, undersized foreigners who represented the Union
and the workers. The Governor signed the bill. Afterwards this
tenement-house cigar legislation was declared invalid by the Court
of Appeals in the Jacobs decision. Jacobs was one of the rare
tenement-house manufacturers of cigars who occupied quite a suite
of rooms, so that in his case the living conditions were altogether
exceptional. What the reason was which influenced those bringing the
suit to select the exceptional instead of the average worker I do not
know; of course such action was precisely the action which those most
interested in having the law broken down were anxious to see taken.
The Court of Appeals declared the law unconstitutional, and in their
decision the judges reprobated the law as an assault upon the "hallowed"
influences of "home." 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 tenement-house 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. Their choice of the words "hallowed" and "home,"
as applicable to the revolting conditions attending the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses, showed that they had no idea what it was
that they were deciding. Imagine the "hallowed" associations of a "home"
consisting of one room where two families, one of them with a boarder,
live, eat, and work! This decision completely blocked tenement-house
reform legislation in New York for a score of years, and hampers it to
this day. It was one of the most serious setbacks which the cause of
industrial and social progress and reform ever received.

I had been brought up to hold the courts in especial reverence. The
people with whom I was most intimate were apt to praise the courts for
just such decisions as this, and to speak of them as bulwarks against
disorder and barriers against demagogic legislation. These were the same
people with whom the judges who rendered these decisions were apt
to foregather at social clubs, or dinners, or in private life. Very
naturally they all tended to look at things from the same standpoint. Of
course it took more than one experience such as this Tenement Cigar Case
to shake me out of the attitude in which I was brought up. But various
decisions, not only of the New York court but of certain other State
courts and even of the United States Supreme Court, during the quarter
of a century following the passage of this tenement-house legislation,
did at last thoroughly wake me to the actual fact. I grew to realize
that all that Abraham Lincoln had said about the Dred Scott decision
could be said with equal truth and justice about the numerous decisions
which in our own day were erected as bars across the path of social
reform, and which brought to naught so much of the effort to secure
justice and fair dealing for workingmen and workingwomen, and for plain
citizens generally.

Some of the wickedness and inefficiency in public life was then
displayed in simpler fashion than would probably now be the case. Once
or twice I was a member of committees which looked into gross and widely
ramifying governmental abuses. On the whole, the most important part I
played was in the third Legislature in which I served, when I acted as
chairman of a committee which investigated various phases of New York
City official life.

The most important of the reform measures our committee recommended was
the bill taking away from the Aldermen their power of confirmation over
the Mayor's appointments. We found that it was possible to get citizens
interested in the character and capacity of the head of the city, so
that they would exercise some intelligent interest in his conduct and
qualifications. But we found that as a matter of fact it was impossible
to get them interested in the Aldermen and other subordinate officers.
In actual practice the Aldermen were merely the creatures of the local
ward bosses or of the big municipal bosses, and where they controlled
the appointments the citizens at large had no chance whatever to make
their will felt. Accordingly we fought for the principle, which I
believe to be of universal application, that what is needed in our
popular government is to give plenty of power to a few officials, and to
make these few officials genuinely and readily responsible to the people
for the exercise of that power. Taking away the confirming power of the
Board of Aldermen did not give the citizens of New York good government.
We knew that if they chose to elect the wrong kind of Mayor they would
have bad government, no matter what the form of the law was. But we did
secure to them the chance to get good government if they desired, and
this was impossible as long as the old system remained. The change was
fought in the way in which all similar changes always are fought. The
corrupt and interested politicians were against it, and the battle-cries
they used, which rallied to them most of the unthinking conservatives,
were that we were changing the old constitutional system, that we were
defacing the monuments of the wisdom of the founders of the government,
that we were destroying that distinction between legislative and
executive power which was the bulwark of our liberties, and that we were
violent and unscrupulous radicals with no reverence for the past.

Of course the investigations, disclosures, and proceedings of the
investigating committee of which I was chairman brought me into
bitter personal conflict with very powerful financiers, very powerful
politicians, and with certain newspapers which these financiers and
politicians controlled. A number of able and unscrupulous men were
fighting, some for their financial lives, and others to keep out of
unpleasantly close neighborhood to State's prison. This meant that there
were blows to be taken as well as given. In such political struggles,
those who went in for the kind of thing that I did speedily excited
animosities among strong and cunning men who would stop at little to
gratify their animosity. Any man engaged in this particular type of
militant and practical reform movement was soon made to feel that he had
better not undertake to push matters home unless his own character was
unassailable. On one of the investigating committees on which I served
there was a countryman, a very able man, who, when he reached New York
City, felt as certain Americans do when they go to Paris--that the moral
restraints of his native place no longer applied. With all his ability,
he was not shrewd enough to realize that the Police Department was
having him as well as the rest of us carefully shadowed. He was caught
red-handed by a plain-clothes man doing what he had no business to do;
and from that time on he dared not act save as those who held his secret
permitted him to act. Thenceforth those officials who stood behind the
Police Department had one man on the committee on whom they could count.
I never saw terror more ghastly on a strong man's face than on the face
of this man on one or two occasions when he feared that events in the
committee might take such a course as to force him into a position where
his colleagues would expose him even if the city officials did not.
However, he escaped, for we were never able to get the kind of proof
which would warrant our asking for the action in which this man could
not have joined.

Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had walked into these
traps our public careers would have ended, at least so far as following
them under the conditions which alone make it worth while to be in
public life at all. A man can of course hold public office, and many a
man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if
there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford
to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth
leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor
strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous
foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor will
clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good service. I have
always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to
be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent
legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and
the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary
for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey.
He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when his public or his
private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not
avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He must walk warily and
fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must
be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, by the way,
that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can
be avoided; but never hit softly.

Like most young men in politics, I went through various oscillations
of feeling before I "found myself." At one period I became so impressed
with the virtue of complete independence that I proceeded to act on each
case purely as I personally viewed it, without paying any heed to the
principles and prejudices of others. The result was that I speedily
and deservedly lost all power of accomplishing anything at all; and I
thereby learned the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities
of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act
in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of
give-and-take between him and them. Again, I at one period began to
believe that I had a future before me, and that it behooved me to be
very far-sighted and scan each action carefully with a view to its
possible effect on that future. This speedily made me useless to the
public and an object of aversion to myself; and I then made up my mind
that I would try not to think of the future at all, but would proceed on
the assumption that each office I held would be the last I ever should
hold, and that I would confine myself to trying to do my work as well as
possible while I held that office. I found that for me personally this
was the only way in which I could either enjoy myself or render good
service to the country, and I never afterwards deviated from this plan.

As regards political advancement the bosses could of course do a good
deal. At that time the warring Stalwart and Half-Breed factions of
the Republican party were supporting respectively President Arthur
and Senator Miller. Neither side cared for me. The first year in the
Legislature I rose to a position of leadership, so that in the second
year, when the Republicans were in a minority, I received the minority
nomination for Speaker, although I was still the youngest man in the
House, being twenty-four years old. The third year the Republicans
carried the Legislature, and the bosses at once took a hand in the
Speakership contest. I made a stout fight for the nomination, but the
bosses of the two factions, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds, combined
and I was beaten. I was much chagrined for the moment. But the fact that
I had fought hard and efficiently, even though defeated, and that I had
made the fight single-handed, with no machine back of me, assured my
standing as floor leader. My defeat in the end materially strengthened
my position, and enabled me to accomplish far more than I could have
accomplished as Speaker. As so often, I found that the titular
position was of no consequence; what counted was the combination of the
opportunity with the ability to accomplish results. The achievement was
the all-important thing; the position, whether titularly high or
low, was of consequence only in so far as it widened the chance for
achievement. After the session closed four of us who looked at politics
from the same standpoint and were known as Independent or Anti-Machine
Republicans were sent by the State Convention as delegates-at-large
to the Republican National Convention of 1884, where I advocated, as
vigorously as I knew how, the nomination of Senator George F. Edmunds.
Mr. Edmunds was defeated and Mr. Blaine nominated. Mr. Blaine was
clearly the choice of the rank and file of the party; his nomination
was won in fair and aboveboard fashion, because the rank and file of the
party stood back of him; and I supported him to the best of my ability
in the ensuing campaign.

The Speakership contest enlightened me as regards more things than the
attitude of the bosses. I had already had some exasperating experiences
with the "silk stocking" reformer type, as Abraham Lincoln called it,
the gentlemen who were very nice, very refined, who shook their heads
over political corruption and discussed it in drawing-rooms and parlors,
but who were wholly unable to grapple with real men in real life. They
were apt vociferously to demand "reform" as if it were some concrete
substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible
masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor reformers
made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticising; and they
delighted in criticising the men who really were doing the things which
they said ought to be done, but which they lacked the sinewy power to
do. They often upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly
undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very politicians
to whom they professed to be most hostile. Moreover, if they believed
that their own interests, individually or as a class, were jeoparded,
they were apt to show no higher standards than did the men they usually
denounced.

One of their shibboleths was that the office should seek the man and not
the man the office. This is entirely true of certain offices at certain
times. It is entirely untrue when the circumstances are different.
It would have been unnecessary and undesirable for Washington to
have sought the Presidency. But if Abraham Lincoln had not sought the
Presidency he never would have been nominated. The objection in such a
case as this lies not to seeking the office, but to seeking it in any
but an honorable and proper manner. The effect of the shibboleth in
question is usually merely to put a premium on hypocrisy, and therefore
to favor the creature who is willing to rise by hypocrisy. When I ran
for Speaker, the whole body of machine politicians was against me, and
my only chance lay in arousing the people in the different districts. To
do this I had to visit the districts, put the case fairly before the men
whom I saw, and make them understand that I was really making a fight
and would stay in the fight to the end. Yet there were reformers who
shook their heads and deplored my "activity" in the canvass. Of course
the one thing which corrupt machine politicians most desire is to have
decent men frown on the activity, that is, on the efficiency, of the
honest man who genuinely wishes to reform politics.

If efficiency is left solely to bad men, and if virtue is confined
solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. When I entered
politics there were, as there always had been--and as there always will
be--any number of bad men in politics who were thoroughly efficient,
and any number of good men who would like to have done lofty things in
politics but who were thoroughly inefficient. If I wished to accomplish
anything for the country, my business was to combine decency and
efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his
best to reduce those ideals to actual practice. This was my ideal, and
to the best of my ability I strove to live up to it.

To a young man, life in the New York Legislature was always interesting
and often entertaining. There was always a struggle of some kind on
hand. Sometimes it was on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes
it was on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, there
were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor being usually of the
unconscious kind. In one session of the Legislature the New York City
Democratic representatives were split into two camps, and there were
two rivals for leadership. One of these was a thoroughly good-hearted,
happy-go-lucky person who was afterwards for several years in Congress.
He had been a local magistrate and was called Judge. Generally he and I
were friendly, but occasionally I did something that irritated him. He
was always willing to vote for any other member's bill himself, and he
regarded it as narrow-minded for any one to oppose one of his
bills, especially if the opposition was upon the ground that it was
unconstitutional--for his views of the Constitution were so excessively
liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect
of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate
money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom
he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to
him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the
Constitution don't touch little things like that," and then added, with
an ingratiating smile, "Anyhow, I'd never allow the Constitution to
come between friends." At the time I was looking over the proofs of Mr.
Bryce's "American Commonwealth," and I told him the incident. He put it
into the first edition of the "Commonwealth"; whether it is in the last
edition or not, I cannot say.

On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in
a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what
"lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill." His rival was a man
of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in
Ireland. He had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close
of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. The expedition,
however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there
incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into
New York politics instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied
in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I
myself at one time occupied. He felt that his rival had gained too much
glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to
where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him: "I
would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the
real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a
month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting
Latin on the floor of this House when you don't know the alpha and
omayga of the language?"

There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above mentioned, a man
whom I will call 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!

The deadlock was tedious; and we hailed with joy such enlivening
incidents as the above.

During my three years' service in the Legislature I worked on a very
simple philosophy of government. It was that personal character and
initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It
was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it
went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for
the need of collective action. I shall never forget the men with whom
I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my
fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney
and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts
who helped us. We had made up our minds that we must not fight fire with
fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in
practical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in
applied morality.

It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially when
it happened that on one side there were corrupt and unscrupulous
demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous
reactionaries. Our effort was to hold the scales even between both. We
tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates
were anything but righteous. We endeavored to cut out the abuses of
property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding
those abuses. We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper
assaults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property
themselves did things that were wicked and corrupt. We were as yet by
no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to the need of
controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of
politics with big business. In this matter I was not behind the rest
of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of them, for no serious leader in
political life then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these
questions. One partial reason--not an excuse or a justification, but a
partial reason--for my slowness in grasping the importance of action in
these matters was the corrupt and unattractive nature of so many of the
men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly
of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even at that date I had
neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money
king, and I did not regard the "money touch," when divorced from other
qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. As
recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight battles, in
which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and
powerful financiers and financial interests of the day. But most of the
fights in which we were engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and
they were more apt to be against that form of corruption which found
its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which
defended or advocated privilege. Fundamentally, our fight was part of
the eternal war against the Powers that Prey; and we cared not a whit in
what rank of life these powers were found.

To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin
against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for
such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of
government. A man who stays long in our American political life, if he
has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great
causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many
instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time,
one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever
the usefulness of any one has been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside.
If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when
the time and the need come together, without asking what the future
holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and
then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel
vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and
reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served,
and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can
do better.