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CHAPTER 5

APPLIED IDEALISM

In the spring of 1899 I was appointed by President Harrison Civil
Service Commissioner. For nearly five years I had not been very
active in political life; although I had done some routine work in the
organization and had made campaign speeches, and in 1886 had run for
Mayor of New York against Abram S. Hewitt, Democrat, and Henry George,
Independent, and had been defeated.

I served six years as Civil Service Commissioner--four years under
President Harrison and then two years under President Cleveland. I
was treated by both Presidents with the utmost consideration. Among my
fellow-Commissioners there was at one time ex-Governor Hugh Thompson, of
South Carolina, and at another time John R. Proctor, of Kentucky. They
were Democrats and ex-Confederate soldiers. I became deeply attached to
both, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every contest in which the
Commission was forced to take part.

Civil Service Reform had two sides. There was, first, the effort to
secure a more efficient administration of the public service, and,
second, the even more important effort to withdraw the administrative
offices of the Government from the domain of spoils politics, and
thereby cut out of American political life a fruitful source of
corruption and degradation. The spoils theory of politics is that
public office is so much plunder which the victorious political party is
entitled to appropriate to the use of its adherents. Under this system
the work of the Government was often done well even in those days, when
Civil Service Reform was only an experiment, because the man running an
office if himself an able and far-sighted man, knew that inefficiency
in administration would be visited on his head in the long run, and
therefore insisted upon most of his subordinates doing good work; and,
moreover, the men appointed under the spoils system were necessarily
men of a certain initiative and power, because those who lacked these
qualities were not able to shoulder themselves to the front. Yet there
were many flagrant instances of inefficiency, where a powerful chief
quartered friend, adherent, or kinsman upon the Government. Moreover,
the necessarily haphazard nature of the employment, the need of
obtaining and holding the office by service wholly unconnected with
official duty, inevitably tended to lower the standard of public
morality, alike among the office-holders and among the politicians who
rendered party service with the hope of reward in office. Indeed, the
doctrine that "To the victor belong the spoils," the cynical battle-cry
of the spoils politician in America for the sixty years preceding my own
entrance into public life, is so nakedly vicious that few right-thinking
men of trained mind defend it. To appoint, promote, reduce, and
expel from the public service, letter-carriers, stenographers, women
typewriters, clerks, because of the politics of themselves or their
friends, without regard to their own service, is, from the standpoint of
the people at large, as foolish and degrading as it is wicked.

Such being the case, it would seem at first sight extraordinary that
it should be so difficult to uproot the system. Unfortunately, it was
permitted to become habitual and traditional in American life, so that
the conception of public office as something to be used primarily for
the good of the dominant political party became ingrained in the mind
of the average American, and he grew so accustomed to the whole process
that it seemed part of the order of nature. Not merely the politicians
but the bulk of the people accepted this in a matter-of-course way as
the only proper attitude. There were plenty of communities where the
citizens themselves did not think it natural, or indeed proper, that
the Post-Office should be held by a man belonging to the defeated
party. Moreover, unless both sides were forbidden to use the offices for
purposes of political reward, the side that did use them possessed
such an advantage over the other that in the long run it was out of the
question for the other not to follow the bad example that had been set.
Each party profited by the offices when in power, and when in opposition
each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it
itself had done and intended again to do.

It was necessary, in order to remedy the evil, both gradually to change
the average citizen's mental attitude toward the question, and also to
secure proper laws and proper administration of the laws. The work is
far from finished even yet. There are still masses of office-holders
who can be used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch political
conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in
the "rotten borough" districts--those where the party is not strong,
and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate
influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to
the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States
and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away
with the spoils system. But in the National Government scores of
thousands of offices have been put under the merit system, chiefly
through the action of the National Civil Service Commission.

The use of Government offices as patronage is a handicap difficult
to overestimate from the standpoint of those who strive to get good
government. Any effort for reform of any sort, National, State, or
municipal, results in the reformers immediately finding themselves face
to face with an organized band of drilled mercenaries who are paid out
of the public chest to train themselves with such skill that ordinary
good citizens when they meet them at the polls are in much the position
of militia matched against regular troops. Yet these citizens themselves
support and pay their opponents in such a way that they are drilled
to overthrow the very men who support them. Civil Service Reform is
designed primarily to give the average American citizen a fair chance in
politics, to give to this citizen the same weight in politics that the
"ward heeler" has.

Patronage does not really help a party. It helps the bosses to get
control of the machinery of the party--as in 1912 was true of the
Republican party--but it does not help the party. On the average, the
most sweeping party victories in our history have been won when the
patronage was against the victors. All that the patronage does is
to help the worst element in the party retain control of the party
organization. Two of the evil elements in our Government against which
good citizens have to contend are, 1, the lack of continuous activity
on the part of these good citizens themselves, and, 2, the ever-present
activity of those who have only an evil self-interest in political
life. It is difficult to interest the average citizen in any particular
movement to the degree of getting him to take an efficient part in it.
He wishes the movement well, but he will not, or often cannot, take
the time and the trouble to serve it efficiently; and this whether
he happens to be a mechanic or a banker, a telegraph operator or a
storekeeper. He has his own interests, his own business, and it is
difficult for him to spare the time to go around to the primaries, to
see to the organization, to see to getting out the vote--in short, to
attend to all the thousand details of political management.

On the other hand, the spoils system breeds a class of men whose
financial interest it is to take this necessary time and trouble. They
are paid for so doing, and they are paid out of the public chest.
Under the spoils system a man is appointed to an ordinary clerical or
ministerial position in the municipal, Federal, or State government, not
primarily because he is expected to be a good servant, but because he
has rendered help to some big boss or to the henchman of some big boss.
His stay in office depends not upon how he performs service, but upon
how he retains his influence in the party. This necessarily means that
his attention to the interests of the public at large, even though real,
is secondary to his devotion to his organization, or to the interest of
the ward leader who put him in his place. So he and his fellows attend
to politics, not once a year, not two or three times a year, like the
average citizen, but every day in the year. It is the one thing that
they talk of, for it is their bread and butter. They plan about it and
they scheme about it. They do it because it is their business. I do not
blame them in the least. I blame us, the people, for we ought to make
it clear as a bell that the business of serving the people in one of the
ordinary ministerial Government positions, which have nothing to do
with deciding the policy of the Government, should have no necessary
connection with the management of primaries, of caucuses, and
of nominating conventions. As a result of our wrong thinking and
supineness, we American citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose
interests in governmental matters are often adverse to ours, who are
thoroughly drilled, thoroughly organized, who make their livelihood
out of politics, and who frequently make their livelihood out of
bad politics. They know every little twist and turn, no matter how
intricate, in the politics of their several wards, and when election
day comes the ordinary citizen who has merely the interest that all good
men, all decent citizens, should have in political life, finds himself
as helpless before these men as if he were a solitary volunteer in the
presence of a band of drilled mercenaries on a field of battle. There
are a couple of hundred thousand Federal offices, not to speak of State
and municipal offices. The men who fill these offices, and the men who
wish to fill them, within and without the dominant party for the time
being, make a regular army, whose interest it is that the system
of bread-and-butter politics shall continue. Against their concrete
interest we have merely the generally unorganized sentiment of the
community in favor of putting things on a decent basis. The large number
of men who believe vaguely in good are pitted against the smaller but
still larger number of men whose interest it often becomes to act
very concretely and actively for evil; and it is small wonder that the
struggle is doubtful.

During my six years' service as Commissioner the field of the merit
system was extended at the expense of the spoils system so as to include
several times the number of offices that had originally been included.
Generally this was done by the introduction of competitive entrance
examinations; sometimes, as in the Navy-Yards, by a system of
registration. This of itself was good work.

Even better work was making the law efficient and genuine where it
applied. As was inevitable in the introduction of such a system, there
was at first only partial success in its application. For instance,
it applied to the ordinary employees in the big custom-houses and
post-offices, but not to the heads of these offices. A number of the
heads of the offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade,
themselves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, directly
or indirectly, to break down the merit system and to pay their own
political debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the
positions under them. Occasionally these men acted with open and naked
brutality. Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law. The Civil
Service Reformers, on the other hand, were in most cases not much used
to practical politics, and were often well-nigh helpless when pitted
against veteran professional politicians. In consequence I found at the
beginning of my experiences that there were many offices in which the
execution of the law was a sham. This was very damaging, because it
encouraged the politicians to assault the law everywhere, and, on the
other hand, made good people feel that the law was not worth while
defending.

The first effort of myself and my colleagues was to secure the genuine
enforcement of the law. In this we succeeded after a number of lively
fights. But of course in these fights we were obliged to strike a large
number of influential politicians, some of them in Congress, some of
them the supporters and backers of men who were in Congress. Accordingly
we soon found ourselves engaged in a series of contests with prominent
Senators and Congressmen. There were a number of Senators and
Congressmen--men like Congressman (afterwards Senator) H. C. Lodge, of
Massachusetts; Senator Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota; Senator Orville
H. Platt, of Connecticut; Senator Cockrell, of Missouri; Congressman
(afterwards President) McKinley, of Ohio, and Congressman Dargan,
of South Carolina--who abhorred the business of the spoilsman, who
efficiently and resolutely championed the reform at every turn, and
without whom the whole reform would certainly have failed. But there
were plenty of other Senators and Congressmen who hated the whole reform
and everything concerned with it and everybody who championed it;
and sometimes, to use a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause,
and sometimes it was peremptory--that is, sometimes the Commission
interfered with their most efficient, and incidentally most corrupt and
unscrupulous, supporters, and at other times, where there was no such
interference, a man nevertheless had an innate dislike of anything
that tended to decency in government. These men were always waging war
against us, and they usually had the more or less open support of a
certain number of Government officials, from Cabinet officers down. The
Senators and Congressmen in question opposed us in many different ways.
Sometimes, for instance, they had committees appointed to investigate
us--during my public career without and within office I grew accustomed
to accept appearances before investigating committees as part of
the natural order of things. Sometimes they tried to cut off the
appropriation for the Commission.

Occasionally we would bring to terms these Senators or Congressmen
who fought the Commission by the simple expedient of not holding
examinations in their districts. This always brought frantic appeals
from their constituents, and we would explain that unfortunately the
appropriations had been cut, so that we could not hold examinations in
every district, and that obviously we could not neglect the districts
of those Congressmen who believed in the reform and therefore in the
examinations. The constituents then turned their attention to the
Congressman, and the result was that in the long run we obtained
sufficient money to enable us to do our work. On the whole, the
most prominent leaders favored us. Any man who is the head of a big
department, if he has any fitness at all, wishes to see that department
run well; and a very little practical experience shows him that
it cannot be run well if he must make his appointments to please
spoilsmongering politicians. As with almost every reform that I have
ever undertaken, most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd
slander. Our opponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of
what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our methods, acts,
and personalities. I had more than one lively encounter with the authors
and sponsors of these misrepresentations, which at the time were full of
interest to me. But it would be a dreary thing now to go over the record
of exploded mendacity, or to expose the meanness and malice shown by
some men of high official position. A favorite argument was to call
the reform Chinese, because the Chinese had constructed an inefficient
governmental system based in part on the theory of written competitive
examinations. The argument was simple. There had been written
examinations in China; it was proposed to establish written examinations
in the United States; therefore the proposed system was Chinese. The
argument might have been applied still further. For instance, the
Chinese had used gunpowder for centuries; gunpowder is used in
Springfield rifles; therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese. One
argument is quite as logical as the other. It was impossible to answer
every falsehood about the system. But it was possible to answer certain
falsehoods, especially when uttered by some Senator or Congressman of
note. Usually these false statements took the form of assertions that
we had asked preposterous questions of applicants. At times they also
included the assertion that we credited people to districts where they
did not live; this simply meaning that these persons were not known to
the active ward politicians of those districts.

One opponent with whom we had a rather lively tilt was a Republican
Congressman from Ohio, Mr. Grosvenor, one of the floor leaders. Mr.
Grosvenor made his attack in the House, and enumerated our sins in
picturesque rather than accurate fashion. There was a Congressional
committee investigating us at the time, and on my next appearance before
them I asked that Mr. Grosvenor be requested to meet me before the
committee. Mr. Grosvenor did not take up the challenge for several
weeks, until it was announced that I was leaving for my ranch in Dakota;
whereupon, deeming it safe, he wrote me a letter expressing his ardent
wish that I should appear before the committee to meet him. I promptly
canceled my ticket, waited, and met him. He proved to be a person of
happily treacherous memory, so that the simple expedient of arranging
his statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion. For
instance, he had been trapped into making the unwary remark, "I do not
want to repeal the Civil Service Law, and I never said so." I produced
the following extract from one of his speeches: "I will vote not only to
strike out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law." To
this he merely replied that there was "no inconsistency between those
two statements." He asserted that "Rufus P. Putnam, fraudulently
credited to Washington County, Ohio, never lived in Washington County,
Ohio, or in my Congressional district, or in Ohio as far as I know."
We produced a letter which, thanks to a beneficent Providence, he had
himself written about Mr. Rufus P. Putnam, in which he said: "Mr. Rufus
P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district and has relatives living
there now." He explained, first, that he had not written the letter;
second, that he had forgotten he had written the letter; and, third,
that he was grossly deceived when he wrote it. He said: "I have not
been informed of one applicant who has found a place in the classified
service from my district." We confronted him with the names of eight. He
looked them over and said, "Yes, the eight men are living in my district
as now constituted," but added that his district had been gerrymandered
so that he could no longer tell who did and who didn't live in it. When
I started further to question him, he accused me of a lack of humor in
not appreciating that his statements were made "in a jesting way," and
then announced that "a Congressman making a speech on the floor of the
House of Representatives was perhaps in a little different position
from a witness on the witness stand"--a frank admission that he did not
consider exactitude of statement necessary when he was speaking as a
Congressman. Finally he rose with great dignity and said that it was his
"constitutional right" not to be questioned elsewhere as to what he said
on the floor of the House of Representatives; and accordingly he left
the delighted committee to pursue its investigations without further aid
from him.

A more important opponent was the then Democratic leader of the Senate,
Mr. Gorman. In a speech attacking the Commission Mr. Gorman described
with moving pathos how a friend of his, "a bright young man from
Baltimore," a Sunday-school scholar, well recommended by his pastor,
wished to be a letter-carrier; and how he went before us to be examined.
The first question we asked him, said Mr. Gorman, was the shortest route
from Baltimore to China, to which the "bright young man" responded that
he didn't want to go to China, and had never studied up that route.
Thereupon, said Mr. Gorman, we asked him all about the steamship lines
from the United States to Europe, then branched him off into geology,
tried him in chemistry, and finally turned him down.

Apparently Mr. Gorman did not know that we kept full records of our
examinations. I at once wrote to him stating that I had carefully looked
through all our examination papers and had not been able to find one
question even remotely resembling any of these questions which he
alleged had been asked, and that I would be greatly obliged if he would
give me the name of the "bright young man" who had deceived him.

However, that "bright young man" remained permanently without a name.
I also asked Mr. Gorman, if he did not wish to give us the name of
his informant, to give us the date of the examination in which he was
supposed to have taken part; and I offered, if he would send down a
representative to look through our files, to give him all the aid we
could in his effort to discover any such questions. But Mr. Gorman, not
hitherto known as a sensitive soul, expressed himself as so shocked
at the thought that the veracity of the "bright young man" should be
doubted that he could not bring himself to answer my letter. So I made
a public statement to the effect that no such questions had ever been
asked. Mr. Gorman brooded over this; and during the next session of
Congress he rose and complained that he had received a very "impudent"
letter from me (my letter was a respectful note calling attention to
the fact that, if he wished, he could by personal examination satisfy
himself that his statements had no foundation in fact). He further
stated that he had been "cruelly" called to account by me because he
had been endeavoring to right a "great wrong" that the Civil Service
Commission had committed; but he never, then or afterwards, furnished
any clue to the identity of that child of his fondest fancy, the bright
young man without a name.[*]

     [*] This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to
     the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator
     Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just
     been victorious in the Congressional elections.

The incident is of note chiefly as shedding light on the mental make-up
of the man who at the time was one of the two or three most influential
leaders of the Democratic party. Mr. Gorman had been Mr. Cleveland's
party manager in the Presidential campaign, and was the Democratic
leader in Congress. It seemed extraordinary that he should be so
reckless as to make statements with no foundation in fact, which he
might have known that I would not permit to pass unchallenged. Then,
as now, the ordinary newspaper, in New York and elsewhere, was quite as
reckless in its misstatements of fact about public men and measures; but
for a man in Mr. Gorman's position of responsible leadership such action
seemed hardly worth while. However, it is at least to be said for
Mr. Gorman that he was not trying by falsehood to take away any man's
character. It would be well for writers and speakers to bear in mind
the remark of Pudd'nhead Wilson to the effect that while there are nine
hundred and ninety-nine kinds of falsehood, the only kind specifically
condemned in Scripture, just as murder, theft, and adultery are
condemned, is bearing false witness against one's neighbor.

One of the worst features of the old spoils system was the ruthless
cruelty and brutality it so often bred in the treatment of faithful
public servants without political influence. Life is hard enough and
cruel enough at best, and this is as true of public service as of
private service. Under no system will it be possible to do away with all
favoritism and brutality and meanness and malice. But at least we can
try to minimize the exhibition of these qualities. I once came across
a case in Washington which very keenly excited my sympathy. Under an
Administration prior to the one with which I was connected a lady had
been ousted from a Government position. She came to me to see if she
could be reinstated. (This was not possible, but by active work I did
get her put back in a somewhat lower position, and this only by an
appeal to the sympathy of a certain official.) She was so pallid and so
careworn that she excited my sympathy and I made inquiries about
her. She was a poor woman with two children, a widow. She and her two
children were in actual want. She could barely keep the two children
decently clad, and she could not give them the food growing children
need. Three years before she had been employed in a bureau in a
department of Washington, doing her work faithfully, at a salary of
about $800. It was enough to keep her and her two children in clothing,
food, and shelter. One day the chief of the bureau called her up and
told her he was very sorry that he had to dismiss her. In great
distress she asked him why; she thought that she had been doing her work
satisfactorily. He answered her that she had been doing well, and that
he wished very much that he could keep her, that he would do so if he
possibly could, but that he could not; for a certain Senator, giving his
name, a very influential member of the Senate, had demanded her place
for a friend of his who had influence. The woman told the bureau chief
that it meant turning her out to starve. She had been thirteen or
fourteen years in the public service; she had lost all touch with her
friends in her native State; dismissal meant absolute want for her and
her children. On this the chief, who was a kind man, said he would not
have her turned out, and sent her back to her work.

But three weeks afterwards he called her up again and told her he could
not say how sorry he was, but the thing had to be done. The Senator had
been around in person to know why the change had not been made, and had
told the chief that he would be himself removed if the place were not
given him. The Senator was an extremely influential man. His wants had
to be attended to, and the woman had to go. And go she did, and turned
out she was, to suffer with her children and to starve outright, or to
live in semi-starvation, just as might befall. I do not blame the bureau
chief, who hated to do what he did, although he lacked the courage to
refuse; I do not even very much blame the Senator, who did not know
the hardship that he was causing, and who had been calloused by long
training in the spoils system; but this system, a system which permits
and encourages such deeds, is a system of brutal iniquity.

Any man accustomed to dealing with practical politics can with
difficulty keep a straight face when he reads or listens to some of the
arguments advanced against Civil Service Reform. One of these arguments,
a favorite with machine politicians, takes the form of an appeal to
"party loyalty" in filling minor offices. Why, again and again these
very same machine politicians take just as good care of henchmen of
the opposite party as of those of their own party. In the underworld of
politics the closest ties are sometimes those which knit together the
active professional workers of opposite political parties. A friend
of mine in the New York Legislature--the hero of the alpha and omega
incident--once remarked to me: "When you have been in public life a
little longer, Mr. Roosevelt, you will understand that there are no
politics in politics." In the politics to which he was referring this
remark could be taken literally.

Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me, at about
the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tammany man named Costigan, a good
fellow according to his lights. I had been speaking to him of a fight in
one of the New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which
the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, moreover,
was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions. It had been an
interesting fight in more than one way. For instance, the Republican
party, at the general election, polled something like five hundred
and fifty votes, and yet at the primary the two factions polled
seven hundred and twenty-five all told. The sum of the parts was thus
considerably greater than the whole. There had been other little details
that made the contest worthy of note. The hall in which the primary was
held had been hired by the Stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman. To
him the Half-Breeds applied to know whether they could not hire the hall
away from their opponents, and offered him a substantial money advance.
The conscientious gentleman replied that his word was as good as his
bond, that he had hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and that it must
be theirs. But he added that he was willing to hire the doorway to
the Half-Breeds if they paid him the additional sum of money they had
mentioned. The bargain was struck, and the meeting of the hostile hosts
was spirited, when the men who had rented the doorway sought to bar the
path of the men who had rented the hall. I was asking my friend Costigan
about the details of the struggle, as he seemed thoroughly acquainted
with them, and he smiled good-naturedly over my surprise at there having
been more votes cast than there were members of the party in the whole
district. Said I, "Mr. Costigan, you seem to have a great deal of
knowledge about this; how did it happen?" To which he replied, "Come
now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it's the same gang that votes in all the
primaries."

So much for most of the opposition to the reform. There was, however,
some honest and at least partially justifiable opposition both to
certain of the methods advocated by Civil Service Reformers and to
certain of the Civil Service Reformers themselves. The pet shibboleths
of the opponents of the reform were that the system we proposed to
introduce would give rise to mere red-tape bureaucracy, and that the
reformers were pharisees. Neither statement was true. Each statement
contained some truth.

If men are not to be appointed by favoritism, wise or unwise, honest or
dishonest, they must be appointed in some automatic way, which generally
means by competitive examination. The easiest kind of competitive
examination is an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate
for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, typewriters,
clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an astronomical observatory,
for instance. It is utterly inappropriate for carpenters, detectives,
and mounted cattle inspectors along the Rio Grande--to instance
three types of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent
well-meaning bureaucrats from insisting on written competitive entrance
examinations. It would be quite possible to hold a very good competitive
examination for mounted cattle inspectors by means of practical tests
in brand reading and shooting with rifle and revolver, in riding
"mean" horses and in roping and throwing steers. I did my best to have
examinations of this kind instituted, but my proposal was of precisely
the type which most shocks the routine official mind, and I was never
able to get it put into practical effect.

The important point, and the point most often forgotten by zealous
Civil Service Reformers, was to remember that the routine competitive
examination was merely a means to an end. It did not always produce
ideal results. But it was normally better than a system of appointments
for spoils purposes; it sometimes worked out very well indeed; and in
most big governmental offices it not only gave satisfactory results,
but was the only system under which good results could be obtained. For
instance, when I was Police Commissioner we appointed some two thousand
policemen at one time. It was utterly impossible for the Commissioners
each to examine personally the six or eight thousand applicants.
Therefore they had to be appointed either on the recommendation of
outsiders or else by written competitive examination. The latter
method--the one we adopted--was infinitely preferable. We held a rigid
physical and moral pass examination, and then, among those who passed,
we held a written competitive examination, requiring only the knowledge
that any good primary common school education would meet--that is, a
test of ordinary intelligence and simple mental training. Occasionally
a man who would have been a good officer failed, and occasionally a man
who turned out to be a bad officer passed; but, as a rule, the men with
intelligence sufficient to enable them to answer the questions were of a
type very distinctly above that of those who failed.

The answers returned to some of the questions gave an illuminating idea
of the intelligence of those answering them. For instance, one of our
questions in a given examination was a request to name five of the New
England States. One competitor, obviously of foreign birth, answered:
"England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cork." His neighbor, who
had probably looked over his shoulder but who had North of Ireland
prejudices, made the same answer except that he substituted Belfast
for Cork. A request for a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln
elicited, among other less startling pieces of information, the fact
that many of the applicants thought that he was a general in the Civil
War; several thought that he was President of the Confederate States;
three thought he had been assassinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas
Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington
Booth--the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot
by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with
which he was most familiar in connection therewith. A request to name
five of the States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included
almost every State in the Union. It happened to be at the time of the
silver agitation in the West, and the Rocky Mountain States accordingly
figured in a large percentage of the answers. Some of the men thought
that Chicago was on the Pacific Ocean. Others, in answer to a query as
to who was the head of the United States Government, wavered between
myself and Recorder Goff; one brilliant genius, for inscrutable reasons,
placed the leadership in the New York Fire Department. Now of course
some of the men who answered these questions wrong were nevertheless
quite capable of making good policemen; but it is fair to assume that
on the average the candidate who has a rudimentary knowledge of the
government, geography, and history of his country is a little better
fitted, in point of intelligence, to be a policeman than the one who has
not.

Therefore I felt convinced, after full experience, that as regards very
large classes of public servants by far the best way to choose the men
for appointment was by means of written competitive examination. But
I absolutely split off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service
Reform friends when they advocated written competitive examinations for
promotion. In the Police Department I found these examinations a serious
handicap in the way of getting the best men promoted, and never in any
office did I find that the written competitive promotion examination did
any good. The reason for a written competitive entrance examination is
that it is impossible for the head of the office, or the candidate's
prospective immediate superior, himself to know the average candidate
or to test his ability. But when once in office the best way to test any
man's ability is by long experience in seeing him actually at work.
His promotion should depend upon the judgment formed of him by his
superiors.

So much for the objections to the examinations. Now for the objections
to the men who advocated the reform. As a rule these men were
high-minded and disinterested. Certain of them, men like the leaders
in the Maryland and Indiana Reform Associations, for instances,
Messrs. Bonaparte and Rose, Foulke and Swift, added common sense, broad
sympathy, and practical efficiency to their high-mindedness. But in New
York, Philadelphia, and Boston there really was a certain mental and
moral thinness among very many of the leaders in the Civil Service
Reform movement. It was this quality which made them so profoundly
antipathetic to vigorous and intensely human people of the stamp of
my friend Joe Murray--who, as I have said, always felt that my Civil
Service Reform affiliations formed the one blot on an otherwise
excellent public record. The Civil Service Reform movement was one from
above downwards, and the men who took the lead in it were not men who as
a rule possessed a very profound sympathy with or understanding of the
ways of thought and life of their average fellow-citizen. They were not
men who themselves desired to be letter-carriers or clerks or policemen,
or to have their friends appointed to these positions. Having no
temptation themselves in this direction, they were eagerly anxious to
prevent other people getting such appointments as a reward for political
services. In this they were quite right. It would be impossible to run
any big public office to advantage save along the lines of the strictest
application of Civil Service Reform principles; and the system should be
extended throughout our governmental service far more widely than is now
the case.

But there are other and more vital reforms than this. Too many Civil
Service Reformers, when the trial came, proved tepidly indifferent
or actively hostile to reforms that were of profound and far-reaching
social and industrial consequence. Many of them were at best lukewarm
about movements for the improvement of the conditions of toil and
life among men and women who labor under hard surroundings, and were
positively hostile to movements which curbed the power of the great
corporation magnates and directed into useful instead of pernicious
channels the activities of the great corporation lawyers who advised
them.

Most of the newspapers which regarded themselves as the especial
champions of Civil Service Reform and as the highest exponents of civic
virtue, and which distrusted the average citizen and shuddered over the
"coarseness" of the professional politicians, were, nevertheless, given
to vices even more contemptible than, although not so gross as, those
they denounced and derided. Their editors were refined men of cultivated
tastes, whose pet temptations were backbiting, mean slander, and
the snobbish worship of anything clothed in wealth and the outward
appearances of conventional respectability. They were not robust or
powerful men; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, strong
men; often they had in them a vein of physical timidity. They avenged
themselves to themselves for an uneasy subconsciousness of their
own shortcomings by sitting in cloistered--or, rather, pleasantly
upholstered--seclusion, and sneering at and lying about men who made
them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes these were bad men, who made them
feel uncomfortable by the exhibition of coarse and repellent vice; and
sometimes they were men of high character, who held ideals of courage
and of service to others, and who looked down and warred against the
shortcomings of swollen wealth, and the effortless, easy lives of those
whose horizon is bounded by a sheltered and timid respectability.
These newspapers, owned and edited by these men, although free from the
repulsive vulgarity of the yellow press, were susceptible to influence
by the privileged interests, and were almost or quite as hostile to
manliness as they were to unrefined vice--and were much more hostile
to it than to the typical shortcomings of wealth and refinement. They
favored Civil Service Reform; they favored copyright laws, and the
removal of the tariff on works of art; they favored all the proper (and
even more strongly all the improper) movements for international peace
and arbitration; in short, they favored all good, and many goody-goody,
measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make
demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were
lukewarm about, efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were
not sensitive concerning National honor; and, above all, they opposed
every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane, to change our social and
economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice
towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the
possibly grateful many.

Some of the men foremost in the struggle for Civil Service Reform have
taken a position of honorable leadership in the battle for those other
and more vital reforms. But many of them promptly abandoned the field of
effort for decency when the battle took the form, not of a fight against
the petty grafting of small bosses and small politicians--a vitally
necessary battle, be it remembered--but of a fight against the great
intrenched powers of privilege, a fight to secure justice through the
law for ordinary men and women, instead of leaving them to suffer cruel
injustice either because the law failed to protect them or because it
was twisted from its legitimate purposes into a means for oppressing
them.

One of the reasons why the boss so often keeps his hold, especially in
municipal matters, is, or at least has been in the past, because so
many of the men who claim to be reformers have been blind to the need
of working in human fashion for social and industrial betterment. Such
words as "boss" and "machine" now imply evil, but both the implication
the words carry and the definition of the words themselves are somewhat
vague. A leader is necessary; but his opponents always call him a boss.
An organization is necessary; but the men in opposition always call it a
machine. Nevertheless, there is a real and deep distinction between the
leader and the boss, between organizations and machines. A political
leader who fights openly for principles, and who keeps his position of
leadership by stirring the consciences and convincing the intellects of
his followers, so that they have confidence in him and will follow him
because they can achieve greater results under him than under any one
else, is doing work which is indispensable in a democracy. The boss, on
the other hand, is a man who does not gain his power by open means, but
by secret means, and usually by corrupt means. Some of the worst and
most powerful bosses in our political history either held no public
office or else some unimportant public office. They made no appeal
either to intellect or conscience. Their work was done behind closed
doors, and consisted chiefly in the use of that greed which gives in
order that in return it may get. A boss of this kind can pull wires in
conventions, can manipulate members of the Legislature, can control
the giving or withholding of office, and serves as the intermediary for
bringing together the powers of corrupt politics and corrupt business.
If he is at one end of the social scale, he may through his agents
traffic in the most brutal forms of vice and give protection to the
purveyors of shame and sin in return for money bribes. If at the other
end of the scale, he may be the means of securing favors from high
public officials, legislative or executive, to great industrial
interests; the transaction being sometimes a naked matter of bargain and
sale, and sometimes being carried on in such manner that both parties
thereto can more or less successfully disguise it to their consciences
as in the public interest. The machine is simply another name for the
kind of organization which is certain to grow up in a party or section
of a party controlled by such bosses as these and by their henchmen,
whereas, of course, an effective organization of decent men is essential
in order to secure decent politics.

If these bosses were responsible for nothing but pure wickedness, they
would probably last but a short time in any community. And, in any
event, if the men who are horrified by their wickedness were themselves
as practical and as thoroughly in touch with human nature, the bosses
would have a short shrift. The trouble is that the boss does understand
human nature, and that he fills a place which the reformer cannot fill
unless he likewise understands human nature. Sometimes the boss is a man
who cares for political power purely for its own sake, as he might care
for any other hobby; more often he has in view some definitely selfish
object such as political or financial advancement. He can rarely
accomplish much unless he has another side to him. A successful boss is
very apt to be a man who, in addition to committing wickedness in his
own interest, also does look after the interests of others, even if not
from good motives. There are some communities so fortunate that there
are very few men who have private interests to be served, and in
these the power of the boss is at a minimum. There are many country
communities of this type. But in communities where there is poverty and
ignorance, the conditions are ripe for the growth of a boss. Moreover,
wherever big business interests are liable either to be improperly
favored or improperly discriminated against and blackmailed by public
officials--and the result is just as vicious in one case as in the
other--the boss is almost certain to develop. The best way of getting at
this type of boss is by keeping the public conscience aroused and alert,
so that it will tolerate neither improper attack upon, nor improper
favoritism towards, these corporations, and will quickly punish any
public servant guilty of either.

There is often much good in the type of boss, especially common in big
cities, who fulfills towards the people of his district in rough
and ready fashion the position of friend and protector. He uses his
influence to get jobs for young men who need them. He goes into court
for a wild young fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with
cash or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner who is
crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of work. He organizes
clambakes and chowder parties and picnics, and is consulted by the
local labor leaders when a cut in wages is threatened. For some of
his constituents he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper
favors; but he preserves human relations with all. He may be a very bad
and very corrupt man, a man whose action in blackmailing and protecting
vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these
constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard
against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and
very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this
clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human
understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an
appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will
often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the
friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in
things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them,
not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude
and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling. They
have a feeling of clan-loyalty to him; his and their relations may be
substantially those which are right and proper among primitive people
still in the clan stage of moral development. The successful fight
against this type of vicious boss, and the type of vicious politics
which produces it, can be made only by men who have a genuine
fellow-feeling for and understanding of the people for and with whom
they are to work, and who in practical fashion seek their social and
industrial benefit.

There are communities of poor men, whose lives are hard, in which the
boss, though he would be out of place in a more advanced community, if
fundamentally an honest man, meets a real need which would otherwise not
be met. Because of his limitations in other than purely local matters
it may be our duty to fight such a boss; but it may also be our duty
to recognize, within his limitations, both his sincerity and his
usefulness.

Yet again even the boss who really is evil, like the business man who
really is evil, may on certain points be sound, and be doing good work.
It may be the highest duty of the patriotic public servant to work with
the big boss or the big business man on these points, while refusing
to work with him on others. In the same way there are many self-styled
reformers whose conduct is such as to warrant Tom Reed's bitter remark,
that when Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a
scoundrel he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained in the
word reform. Yet, none the less, it is our duty to work for the
reforms these men champion, without regard to the misconduct of the men
themselves on other points. I have known in my life many big business
men and many big political bosses who often or even generally did evil,
but who on some occasions and on certain issues were right. I never
hesitated to do battle against these men when they were wrong; and, on
the other hand, as long as they were going my way I was glad to have
them do so. To have repudiated their aid when they were right and were
striving for a right end, and for what was of benefit to the people--no
matter what their motives may have been--would have been childish, and
moreover would have itself been misconduct against the people.

My duty was to stand with every one while he was right, and to stand
against him when he went wrong; and this I have tried to do as regards
individuals and as regards groups of individuals. When a business man or
labor leader, politician or reformer, is right, I support him; when
he goes wrong, I leave him. When Mr. Lorimer upheld the war for the
liberation of Cuba, I supported him; when he became United States
Senator by improper methods, I opposed him. The principles or methods
which the Socialists advocate and which I believe to be in the interest
of the people I support, and those which I believe to be against the
interest of the people I oppose. Moreover, when a man has done evil, but
changes, and works for decency and righteousness, and when, as far as
I can see, the change is real and the man's conduct sincere, then I
welcome him and work heartily with him, as an equal with an equal.
For thirty years after the Civil War the creed of mere materialism was
rampant in both American politics and American business, and many, many
strong men, in accordance with the prevailing commercial and political
morality, did things for which they deserve blame and condemnation; but
if they now sincerely change, and strive for better things, it is unwise
and unjust to bar them from fellowship. So long as they work for evil,
smite them with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon! When they change
and show their faith by their works, remember the words of Ezekiel: "If
the wicked will turn from all the sins he has committed, and keep all my
statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live,
he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they
shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done
he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?
saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and
live?"

Every man who has been in practical politics grows to realize that
politicians, big and little, are no more all of them bad than they are
all of them good. Many of these men are very bad men indeed, but there
are others among them--and some among those held up to special obloquy,
too--who, even although they may have done much that is evil, also show
traits of sterling worth which many of their critics wholly lack. There
are few men for whom I have ever felt a more cordial and contemptuous
dislike than for some of the bosses and big professional politicians
with whom I have been brought into contact. On the other hand, in
the case of some political leaders who were most bitterly attacked as
bosses, I grew to know certain sides of their characters which inspired
in me a very genuine regard and respect.

To read much of the assault on Senator Hanna, one would have thought
that he was a man incapable of patriotism or of far-sighted devotion to
the country's good. I was brought into intimate contact with him only
during the two and a half years immediately preceding his death. I was
then President, and perforce watched all his actions at close range.
During that time he showed himself to be a man of rugged sincerity of
purpose, of great courage and loyalty, and of unswerving devotion to the
interests of the Nation and the people as he saw those interests. He was
as sincerely desirous of helping laboring men as of helping capitalists.
His ideals were in many ways not my ideals, and there were points where
both by temperament and by conviction we were far apart. Before this
time he had always been unfriendly to me; and I do not think he ever
grew to like me, at any rate not until the very end of his life.
Moreover, I came to the Presidency under circumstances which, if he
had been a smaller man, would inevitably have thrown him into violent
antagonism to me. He was the close and intimate friend of President
McKinley. He was McKinley's devoted ally and follower, and his trusted
adviser, who was in complete sympathy with him. Partly because of this
friendship, his position in the Senate and in the country was unique.

With McKinley's sudden death Senator Hanna found himself bereft of his
dearest friend, while I, who had just come to the Presidency, was in his
view an untried man, whose trustworthiness on many public questions
was at least doubtful. Ordinarily, as has been shown, not only in
our history, but in the history of all other countries, in countless
instances, over and over again, this situation would have meant
suspicion, ill will, and, at the last, open and violent antagonism. Such
was not the result, in this case, primarily because Senator Hanna had in
him the quality that enabled him to meet a serious crisis with dignity,
with power, and with disinterested desire to work for the common good.
Within a few days of my accession he called on me, and with entire
friendliness and obvious sincerity, but also with entire self-respect,
explained that he mourned McKinley as probably no other man did; that he
had not been especially my friend, but that he wished me to understand
that thenceforward, on every question where he could conscientiously
support me, I could count upon his giving me as loyal aid as it was
in his power to render. He added that this must not be understood as
committing him to favor me for nomination and election, because that
matter must be left to take care of itself as events should decide; but
that, aside from this, what he said was to be taken literally; in other
words, he would do his best to make my Administration a success by
supporting me heartily on every point on which he conscientiously could,
and that this I could count upon. He kept his word absolutely. He never
became especially favorable to my nomination; and most of his close
friends became bitterly opposed to me and used every effort to persuade
him to try to bring about my downfall. Most men in his position would
have been tempted to try to make capital at my expense by antagonizing
me and discrediting me so as to make my policies fail, just for the
sake of making them fail. Senator Hanna, on the contrary, did everything
possible to make them succeed. He kept his word in the letter and the
spirit, and on every point on which he felt conscientiously able to
support me he gave me the heartiest and most effective support, and did
all in his power to make my Administration a success; and this with
no hope of any reward for himself, of any gratitude from me, or of any
appreciation by the public at large, but solely because he deemed such
action necessary for the well-being of the country as a whole.

My experience with Senator Quay was similar. I had no personal relations
with him before I was President, and knew nothing of him save by
hearsay. Soon after I became President, Senator Quay called upon me,
told me he had known me very slightly, that he thought most men who
claimed to be reformers were hypocrites, but that he deemed me sincere,
that he thought conditions had become such that aggressive courage
and honesty were necessary in order to remedy them, that he believed I
intended to be a good and efficient President, and that to the best
of his ability he would support me in it making my Administration a
success. He kept his word with absolute good faith. He had been in the
Civil War, and was a medal of honor man; and I think my having been in
the Spanish War gave him at the outset a kindly feeling toward me.
He was also a very well-read man--I owe to him, for instance, my
acquaintance with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius. Not
only did he support me on almost every public question in which I was
most interested--including, I am convinced, every one on which he felt
he conscientiously could do so--but he also at the time of his death
gave a striking proof of his disinterested desire to render a service to
certain poor people, and this under conditions in which not only would
he never know if the service were rendered but in which he had no reason
to expect that his part in it would ever be made known to any other man.

Quay was descended from a French voyageur who had some Indian blood in
him. He was proud of this Indian blood, took an especial interest in
Indians, and whenever Indians came to Washington they always called on
him. Once during my Administration a delegation of Iroquois came over
from Canada to call on me at the White House. Their visit had in it
something that was pathetic as well as amusing. They represented the
descendants of the Six Nations, who fled to Canada after Sullivan
harried their towns in the Revolutionary War. Now, a century and a
quarter later, their people thought that they would like to come back
into the United States; and these representatives had called upon me
with the dim hope that perhaps I could give their tribes land on which
they could settle. As soon as they reached Washington they asked Quay to
bring them to call on me, which he did, telling me that of course their
errand was hopeless and that he had explained as much to them, but that
they would like me to extend the courtesy of an interview. At the close
of the interview, which had been conducted with all the solemnities of
calumet and wampum, the Indians filed out. Quay, before following them,
turned to me with his usual emotionless face and said, "Good-by, Mr.
President; this reminds one of the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, doesn't
it?" I answered, "So you're fond of De Quincey, Senator?" to which Quay
responded, "Yes; always liked De Quincey; good-by." And away he went
with the tribesmen, who seemed to have walked out of a remote past.

Quay had become particularly concerned about the Delawares in the Indian
Territory. He felt that the Interior Department did not do them justice.
He also felt that his colleagues of the Senate took no interest in them.
When in the spring of 1904 he lay in his house mortally sick, he sent
me word that he had something important to say to me, and would have
himself carried round to see me. I sent back word not to think of doing
so, and that on my way back from church next Sunday I would stop in
and call on him. This I accordingly did. He was lying in his bed, death
written on his face. He thanked me for coming, and then explained
that, as he was on the point of death and knew he would never return to
Washington--it was late spring and he was about to leave--he wished to
see me to get my personal promise that, after he died, I would myself
look after the interests of the Delaware Indians. He added that he did
not trust the Interior Department--although he knew that I did not share
his views on this point--and that still less did he believe that any of
his colleagues in the Senate would exert themselves in the interests of
the Delawares, and that therefore he wished my personal assurance that I
would personally see that no injustice was done them. I told him I would
do so, and then added, in rather perfunctory fashion, that he must not
take such a gloomy view of himself, that when he got away for the summer
I hoped he would recover and be back all right when Congress opened. A
gleam came into the old fighter's eyes and he answered: "No, I am dying,
and you know it. I don't mind dying; but I do wish it were possible for
me to get off into the great north woods and crawl out on a rock in the
sun and die like a wolf!"

I never saw him again. When he died I sent a telegram of sympathy to his
wife. A paper which constantly preached reform, and which kept up its
circulation by the no less constant practice of slander, a paper which
in theory condemned all public men who violated the eighth commandment,
and in practice subsisted by incessant violation of the ninth, assailed
me for sending my message to the dead man's wife. I knew the editors of
this paper, and the editor who was their predecessor. They had led
lives of bodily ease and the avoidance of bodily risk; they earned their
livelihood by the practice of mendacity for profit; and they delivered
malignant judgment on a dead man who, whatever his faults, had in his
youth freely risked his life for a great ideal, and who when death was
already clutching his breast had spent almost his last breath on behalf
of humble and friendless people whom he had served with disinterested
loyalty.

There is no greater duty than to war on the corrupt and unprincipled
boss, and on the corrupt and unprincipled business man; and for the
matter of that, on the corrupt and unprincipled labor leader also,
and on the corrupt and unprincipled editor, and on any one else who is
corrupt and unprincipled. But where the conditions are such, whether in
politics or in business, that the great majority of men have behaved in
a way which is gradually seen to be improper, but which at one time did
not conflict with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on
the system should not include warfare on the men themselves, unless
they decline to amend their ways and to dissociate themselves from the
system. There are many good, unimaginative citizens who in politics
or in business act in accordance with accepted standards, in a
matter-of-course way, without questioning these standards; until
something happens which sharply arouses them to the situation, whereupon
they try to work for better things. The proper course in such event is
to let bygones be bygones, and if the men prove by their actions the
sincerity of their conversion, heartily to work with them for the
betterment of business and political conditions.

By the time that I was ending my career as Civil Service Commissioner
I was already growing to understand that mere improvement in political
conditions by itself was not enough. I dimly realized that an even
greater fight must be waged to improve economic conditions, and to
secure social and industrial justice, justice as between individuals
and justice as between classes. I began to see that political effort was
largely valuable as it found expression and resulted in such social and
industrial betterment. I was gradually puzzling out, or trying to puzzle
out, the answers to various questions--some as yet unsolvable to any of
us, but for the solution of which it is the bounden duty of all of us to
work. I had grown to realize very keenly that the duty of the Government
to protect women and children must be extended to include the protection
of all the crushable elements of labor. I saw that it was the affair of
all our people to see that justice obtained between the big corporation
and its employees, and between the big corporation and its smaller
rivals, as well as its customers and the general public. I saw that it
was the affair of all of us, and not only of the employer, if dividends
went up and wages went down; that it was to the interest of all of us
that a full share of the benefit of improved machinery should go to the
workman who used the machinery; and also that it was to the interest of
all of us that each man, whether brain worker or hand worker, should
do the best work of which he was capable, and that there should be
some correspondence between the value of the work and the value of the
reward. It is these and many similar questions which in their sum
make up the great social and industrial problems of to-day, the most
interesting and important of the problems with which our public life
must deal.

In handling these problems I believe that much can be done by the
Government. Furthermore, I believe that, after all that the Government
can do has been done, there will remain as the most vital of all factors
the individual character of the average man and the average woman.
No governmental action can do more than supplement individual action.
Moreover, there must be collective action of kinds distinct from
governmental action. A body of public opinion must be formed, must
make itself felt, and in the end transform, and be transformed by, the
gradual raising of individual standards of conduct.

It is curious to see how difficult it is to make some men understand
that insistence upon one factor does not and must not mean failure fully
to recognize other factors. The selfish individual needs to be taught
that we must now shackle cunning by law exactly as a few centuries back
we shackled force by law. Unrestricted individualism spells ruin to
the individual himself. But so does the elimination of individualism,
whether by law or custom. It is a capital error to fail to recognize the
vital need of good laws. It is also a capital error to believe that good
laws will accomplish anything unless the average man has the right stuff
in him. The toiler, the manual laborer, has received less than justice,
and he must be protected, both by law, by custom, and by the exercise
of his right to increase his wage; and yet to decrease the quantity and
quality of his work will work only evil. There must be a far greater
meed of respect and reward for the hand worker than we now give him, if
our society is to be put on a sound basis; and this respect and reward
cannot be given him unless he is as ambitious to do the best possible
work as is the highest type of brain worker, whether doctor or writer or
artist. There must be a raising of standards, and not a leveling down to
the standard of the poorest and most inefficient. There is urgent need
of intelligent governmental action to assist in making the life of the
man who tills the soil all that it should be, and to see that the manual
worker gets his full share of the reward for what he helps produce; but
if either farmer, mechanic, or day laborer is shiftless or lazy, if he
shirks downright hard work, if he is stupid or self-indulgent, then no
law can save him, and he must give way to a better type.

I suppose that some good people will misunderstand what I say, and
will insist on taking only half of it as representing the whole. Let
me repeat. When I say, that, even after we have all the good laws
necessary, the chief factor in any given man's success or failure must
be that man's own character, it must not be inferred that I am in the
least minimizing the importance of these laws, the real and vital need
for them. The struggle for individual advancement and development can be
brought to naught, or indefinitely retarded, by the absence of law or by
bad law. It can be immeasurably aided by organized effort on the part
of the State. Collective action and individual action, public law and
private character, are both necessary. It is only by a slow and patient
inward transformation such as these laws aid in bringing about that men
are really helped upward in their struggle for a higher and a fuller
life. Recognition of individual character as the most important of all
factors does not mean failure fully to recognize that we must have good
laws, and that we must have our best men in office to enforce these
laws. The Nation collectively will in this way be able to be of real and
genuine service to each of us individually; and, on the other hand,
the wisdom of the collective action will mainly depend on the high
individual average of citizenship.

The relationship of man and woman is the fundamental relationship that
stands at the base of the whole social structure. Much can be done by
law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal
rights with man--including the right to vote, the right to hold and use
property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same
terms as a man. Yet when this has been done it will amount to little
unless on the one hand the man himself realizes his duty to the woman,
and unless on the other hand the woman realizes that she has no claim to
rights unless she performs the duties that go with those rights and that
alone justify her in appealing to them. A cruel, selfish, or licentious
man is an abhorrent member of the community; but, after all, his actions
are no worse in the long run than those of the woman who is content to
be a parasite on others, who is cold, selfish, caring for nothing but
frivolous pleasure and ignoble ease. The law of worthy effort, the
law of service for a worthy end, without regard to whether it brings
pleasure or pain, is the only right law of life, whether for man or for
woman. The man must not be selfish; nor, if the woman is wise, will she
let the man grow selfish, and this not only for her own sake but for
his. One of the prime needs is to remember that almost every duty is
composed of two seemingly conflicting elements, and that over-insistence
on one, to the exclusion of the other, may defeat its own end. Any man
who studies the statistics of the birth-rate among the native Americans
of New England, or among the native French of France, needs not to be
told that when prudence and forethought are carried to the point of cold
selfishness and self-indulgence, the race is bound to disappear. Taking
into account the women who for good reasons do not marry, or who when
married are childless or are able to have but one or two children, it is
evident that the married woman able to have children must on an average
have four or the race will not perpetuate itself. This is the mere
statement of a self-evident truth. Yet foolish and self-indulgent
people often resent this statement as if it were in some way possible
by denunciation to reverse the facts of nature; and, on the other hand,
improvident and shiftless people, inconsiderate and brutal people, treat
the statement as if it justified heads of families in having enormous
numbers of badly nourished, badly brought up, and badly cared for
children for whom they make no effort to provide. A man must think
well before he marries. He must be a tender and considerate husband and
realize that there is no other human being to whom he owes so much of
love and regard and consideration as he does to the woman who with pain
bears and with labor rears the children that are his. No words can paint
the scorn and contempt which must be felt by all right-thinking men, not
only for the brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full
loyalty and consideration to his wife. Moreover, he must work, he must
do his part in the world. On the other hand, the woman must realize that
she has no more right to shirk the business of wifehood and motherhood
than the man has to shirk his business as breadwinner for the household.
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to
enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be
paid as highly. Yet normally for the man and the woman whose welfare
is more important than the welfare of any other human beings, the woman
must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man must remain the
breadwinner, the provider for the wife who bears his children and for
the children she brings into the world. No other work is as valuable or
as exacting for either man or woman; it must always, in every healthy
society, be for both man and woman the prime work, the most important
work; normally all other work is of secondary importance, and must
come as an addition to, not a substitute for, this primary work. The
partnership should be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect,
and unselfishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the
most vitally important of all duties. The performance of duty, and not
an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life
worth while.

Suffrage for women should be looked on from this standpoint. Personally
I feel that it is exactly as much a "right" of women as of men to vote.
But the important point with both men and women is to treat the
exercise of the suffrage as a duty, which, in the long run, must be
well performed to be of the slightest value. I always favored woman's
suffrage, but only tepidly, until my association with women like Jane
Addams and Frances Kellor, who desired it as one means of enabling them
to render better and more efficient service, changed me into a zealous
instead of a lukewarm adherent of the cause--in spite of the fact that
a few of the best women of the same type, women like Mary Antin, did not
favor the movement. A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon
the character of the user. The mere possession of the vote will no more
benefit men and women not sufficiently developed to use it than the
possession of rifles will turn untrained Egyptian fellaheen into
soldiers. This is as true of woman as of man--and no more true.
Universal suffrage in Hayti has not made the Haytians able to govern
themselves in any true sense; and woman suffrage in Utah in no shape or
way affected the problem of polygamy. I believe in suffrage for women
in America, because I think they are fit for it. I believe for women,
as for men, more in the duty of fitting one's self to do well and wisely
with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot.

I wish that people would read books like the novels and stories, at once
strong and charming, of Henry Bordeaux, books like Kathleen Norris's
"Mother," and Cornelia Comer's "Preliminaries," and would use these,
and other such books, as tracts, now and then! Perhaps the following
correspondence will give a better idea than I can otherwise give of the
problems that in everyday life come before men and women, and of the
need that the man shall show himself unselfish and considerate, and do
his full share of the joint duty:

January 3, 1913.

_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:

Dear Sir--I suppose you are willing to stand sponsor for the assertion
that the women of the country are not doing their duty unless they have
large families. I wonder if you know the real reason, after all. Society
and clubs are held largely to blame, but society really takes in so few
people, after all. I thought, when I got married at twenty, that it was
the proper thing to have a family, and, as we had very little of this
world's goods, also thought it the thing to do all the necessary work
for them. I have had nine children, did all my own work, including
washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones as
they came along, which was about every two years; also sewed everything
they wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the
girls while little. I also helped them all in their school work, and
started them in music, etc. But as they grew older I got behind the
times. I never belonged to a club or a society or lodge, nor went to any
one's house scarcely; there wasn't time. In consequence, I knew nothing
that was going on in the town, much less the events of the country, and
at the same time my husband kept growing in wisdom and knowledge,
from mixing with men and hearing topics of the times discussed. At the
beginning of our married life I had just as quick a mind to grasp things
as he did, and had more school education, having graduated from a three
years' high school. My husband more and more declined to discuss things
with me; as he said, "I didn't know anything about it." When I'd ask
he'd say, "Oh, you wouldn't understand if I'd tell you." So here I am,
at forty-five years, hopelessly dull and uninteresting, while he can
mix with the brightest minds in the country as an equal. He's a strong
Progressive man, took very active part in the late campaign, etc. I
am also Progressive, and tried my best, after so many years of shut-in
life, to grasp the ideas you stood for, and read everything I could find
during the summer and fall. But I've been out of touch with people too
long now, and my husband would much rather go and talk to some woman who
hasn't had any children, because she knows things (I am not specifying
any particular woman). I simply bore him to death because I'm not
interesting. Now, tell me, how was it my fault? I was only doing what
I thought was my duty. No woman can keep up with things who never talks
with any one but young children. As soon as my children grew up they
took the same attitude as their father, and frequently say, "Oh, mother
doesn't know." They look up to and admire their father because he's a
man of the world and knows how to act when he goes out. How can I urge
my daughters now to go and raise large families? It means by the time
you have lost your figure and charm for them they are all ashamed of
you. Now, as a believer in woman's rights, do a little talking to the
men as to their duties to their wives, or else refrain from urging
us women to have children. I am only one of thousands of middle-class
respectable women who give their lives to raise a nice family, and then
who become bitter from the injustice done us. Don't let this go into the
waste-basket, but think it over.

Yours respectfully,

---- ----.

New York, January 11, 1913.

_My Dear Mrs. ----_:

Most certainly your letter will not go into the waste-paper basket. I
shall think it over and show it to Mrs. Roosevelt. Will you let me
say, in the first place, that a woman who can write such a letter is
certainly not "hopelessly dull and uninteresting"! If the facts are as
you state, then I do not wonder that you feel bitterly and that you
feel that the gravest kind of injustice has been done you. I have always
tried to insist to men that they should do their duty to the women even
more than the women to them. Now I hardly like to write specifically
about your husband, because you might not like it yourself. It seems to
me almost incredible that any man who is the husband of a woman who has
borne him nine children should not feel that they and he are lastingly
her debtors. You say that you have had nine children, that you did all
your own work, including washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care
of the little ones as they came along; that you sewed everything they
wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the girls
while little; that you helped them all in their school work and started
them in music; but that as they grew older you got behind the times,
that you never belonged to a club or society or lodge, nor went to any
one's house, as you hardly had time to do so; and that in consequence
your husband outgrew you, and that your children look up to him and not
to you and feel that they have outgrown you. If these facts are so, you
have done a great and wonderful work, and the only explanation I can
possibly give of the attitude you describe on the part of your husband
and children is that they do not understand what it is that you have
done. I emphatically believe in unselfishness, but I also believe that
it is a mistake to let other people grow selfish, even when the other
people are husband and children.

Now, I suggest that you take your letter to me, of which I send you back
a copy, and this letter, and then select out of your family the one with
whom you feel most sympathy, whether it is your husband or one of your
children. Show the two letters to him or her, and then have a frank talk
about the matter. If any man, as you say, becomes ashamed of his wife
because she has lost her figure in bearing his children, then that man
is a hound and has every cause to be ashamed of himself. I am sending
you a little book called "Mother," by Kathleen Norris, which will give
you my views on the matter. Of course there are base and selfish men,
just as there are, although I believe in smaller number, base and
selfish women. Man and woman alike should profit by the teachings in
such a story as this of "Mother."

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

January 21, 1913.

_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:

My dear Sir--Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn't expecting
an answer. The next day the book came, and I thank you for your ready
sympathy and understanding. I feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevelt
would think I was hardly loyal to my husband and children; but knowing
of no other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind to your
notice, I told my personal story. If it will, in a small measure, be the
means of helping some one else by molding public opinion, through you, I
shall be content. You have helped me more than you know. Just having you
interested is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though
I shall refuse to be "laid on the shelf." . . . To think that you'd
bother to send me a book. I shall always treasure it both for the text
of the book and the sender. I read it with absorbing interest. The
mother was so splendid. She was ideal. The situations are so startlingly
real, just like what happens here every day with variations.

---- ----.

A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a homily; and these
two letters of my correspondent carry their own lesson.

Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he
has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to
consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward,
whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away from his wife's
standard of refinement and of duty.