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THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1919

CHAPTER 9

 GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK! 

COLONEL ROOSEVELT returned from the war of a few months, just before the meeting of the Republican State Convention in September, 1898, and he was considered a possible candidate for the nomination for Governor. Taking up a New York paper one morning I noticed that Senator Platt had stated that Colonel Roosevelt would not be nominated, but that Governor Black would be renominated for a second term. Senator Platt was the "easy boss," and I knew that unless there was a change in the situation the Colonel would not be nominated.

The Senator was at Manhattan Beach, at the Oriental Hotel. I went down to see him about the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt for the governorship. He was cold on the subject and discouraged me.

"What are your objections to the Colonel's candidacy?" I asked.

"Well, he is rash and impulsive," said the Senator.

"Yes," I answered, "he is impulsive, but his impulses are good, and if you will notice, he is running in the right direction."
"But he slops over," the Senator continued. 
"Yes, he does," I replied, "because there is so much of him to slop. He is so large that he often fills the vessel to overflowing. He has an over plus of vitality and manhood."

The Senator declared,'' He made such a dismal failure in the administration of the police commissioner-ship that his unwisdom and unpopularity, in the judgment of many, take him out of serious consideration for the nomination. He has provoked the violent hostility of the liquor people of the State."

"Senator," I persisted, "I disagree with you entirely. The moral heroism he manifested in his fight against the Sunday saloons of New York will be an asset to the Republican party. Remember, there are a good many people in the State who live above the Harlem and who have no love for, nor even patience with, the saloon on Sunday, or on any other day, and, besides, I believe the number of voters in New York City who are unfriendly to the saloon is often underestimated. Are you not too smart a man and leader to attempt to compete with Tammany Hall for the saloon vote? The liquor dealers may promise to vote for your ticket, but on election day they will vote for Tammany Hall, which they count a friend to be relied upon. You can run Theodore Roosevelt and win without the saloon vote. You can win in spite of it. So able a man as David Bennett Hill—so great a national figure that, backed by his party in the State, he surely would have received the nomination for the presidency on the Democratic ticket in 1892, if Cleveland had not taken it from him—made the fatal political mistake of overestimating the saloon vote in this State, and was driven from power largely on account of his supposed friendliness to the saloon. When he ran for the governorship in 1894 it was reported that he said he would rather have the votes of the saloonkeepers than of the preachers.

"Whether he ever made the statement or not, it was so generally believed that the preachers took him at his word and fought him, and the church people of both parties turned against him and beat him by more than 100,000 votes. On account of that mistake you are in Mr. Hill's place in the United States Senate and have displaced him as the dominant political figure of the State. If you make the mistake he did and punish Roosevelt for having fought the Sunday saloons, it will so anger the church people that they will bury your ticket under an avalanche of 150,000 votes. You will step down and out, and Mr. Hill will return to the political leadership of the State.

'' There are many people who are not total abstainers who count the saloon a bad institution and will knock it at the polls, and many more who resent the impertinence and impiety of the Sunday saloon and will work actively against your ticket. Senator, I have always voted a straight Republican ticket; but if you depose Colonel Roosevelt for having done his sworn duty as police commissioner I will bolt the ticket this fall, and you will find my ballot in that avalanche of votes. I never made a political speech in my life, and yet if you turn down Roosevelt, because you fear the saloon power will beat him, I will take the stump and make a score, or if need be fifty, speeches from here to Buffalo between now and election day and tell the people how it happened, and ask them what they think of it. There is especial reason for caution this fall. You will be handicapped by the fact that this is an 'off' year, not a presidential one, and by the severe criticism on the Republican party for its administration of the canals of the State; and you will need Roosevelt's physical, mental and moral enthusiasm to pull your ticket through."

The Senator said, "Another strong reason why I object to Roosevelt's nomination is that he is such an independent I fear he might go back on the Republican party, if he were to be elected Governor, and fight those of us who put him in office, just like that fool of a Strong, whom we Republicans elected Mayor of New York and who had scarcely taken his seat before he turned against us, who had elected him, and gave the city back into the hands of Tammany Hall at the next election." "Senator," I said, "I think your fears are unfounded. While I am sure he would not stand for any wrongdoing in his party, I consider him a sound Republican and feel that you could rely on him as such." Senator Platt, who was a very keen man, and one of the best judges of human nature I ever saw, sensed the conflict which indeed did come between him and the Colonel over the policies and leadership of the Republican party of the State.

It had gotten to be 5:30 o'clock in the afternoon. Who should get off the train I was to take for home but B. B. Odell, Jr., chairman of the Republican State Committee; Joseph Dickey, Mr. Bain, and others of Newburgh, my personal friends. Mr. Odell said: "Hello, what are you doing down here?"

"I came down to see Senator Platt," I replied, "to try to persuade him to nominate Colonel Roosevelt for the Governorship. The paper this morning reported that he had told you boys last night that the Colonel would not be nominated."

Mr. Odell said, "I am glad you came down. I am for Roosevelt myself and so are my friends here. I think he is the logical candidate as a war hero and reformer, and would poll a heavy vote and be elected. The Senator has faith in your judgment, thinks that you reflect the moral sentiment of the State pretty accurately; I wish you would stay down and have another interview with Mr. Platt. Suppose you go back to the hotel and have dinner with me and see him again to-night."

After dinner I had another talk with the Senator, in which I said:'' Senator, do not think for a moment that Colonel Roosevelt sent me down to see you in the interest of his nomination. He does not know I am here. I have never spoken to him on the subject. While I have corresponded with him ever since he was Police Commissioner, even since he came back to Montauk Point to be mustered out, the matter of the Governorship has never been mentioned by either. I am here because I have seen Theodore Roosevelt at close range for two years and know him to be a man of great ability and all-daring moral courage, and believe that as a leader his administration would work for righteousness."
The Senator was so cold and keen in answering my arguments and unresponsive to my warm appeals, that I went home thoroughly discouraged. Before going to bed I sat down and wrote a letter to the Colonel at Montauk Point, in which, among other things, I said: "I had thought the Republican leaders would have had wisdom enough to offer you the nomination for the governorship, but in a morning paper I saw that Senator Platt had said you would not be the candidate. I knew that settled the matter, if that opinion continued. So, without your advice or consent, I hurried down to the Oriental at Manhattan Beach to-day and had two long, earnest interviews with the Senator, in which I tried to convince him of the wisdom of your nomination. But he discouraged me, for my visit seemed to have made no impression on him whatever. "Whenever I would come around to the plea that he be friendly to your nomination, a sphinx would have been eloquent compared to the sudden silence of his lips. Unless he shall change his mind I fear your nomination will be impossible.''

The Colonel was nominated. After the Convention, one of the men with whom I went back to the hotel for dinner, the day of the interviews, told me that, when I left that night, the Senator called the group of State leaders, who were stopping at the hotel. He said that he told them the night before that Governor Black would have to be renominated or there would be a split in the Republican party, but Doctor Iglehart had been down to see him and had given him four reasons why Colonel Roosevelt should be nominated, three of which he considered valid. On the strength of them he had concluded to reverse his opinion and favor Mr. Roosevelt's nomination. The gentlemen said that from that moment Roosevelt was as good as nominated. Senator Platt afterward told me that it was my visit to Manhattan Beach and the arguments I urged which changed his mind. Colonel Roosevelt told me that it was my visit to the Senator that afternoon that had much to do in putting him on the ticket, and after his nomination he sent me the following letter:

OYSTER bay, L. I., OCTOBER 3, 1898. db. ferdinand Iglehart, 245 Liberty Street,
Newburgh, N. Y. 

My Dear Dr. Iglehart:

Nobody has a better right to be pleased than yourself.   Be sure I appreciate what you have done.
With warm regards, I am,
Faithfully yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
Just after his election as Governor he sent me a beautiful telegram of greeting and appreciation which money cannot buy.

Chairman Odell worked ably, loyally and successfully in the campaign for Colonel Roosevelt, and he was elected by a majority of 17,786 votes.

Governor Roosevelt entered upon his great office with vigor and enthusiasm, making every question and department tingle at his touch; a reformer by birth and by years of education, he found evils in the State which he felt demanded immediate attention. Grounded in his notions of Civil Service Reform, he insisted upon the re-enactment of a Civil Service Law which had been declared unconstitutional by the court and made the law stronger than the original one was.

He had been down in the slum district of New York when he was a young man just entering politics; he had been down into this submerged region while Police Commissioner and as a member of the Board of Health he saw the suffering and ill-health of the poor on account of the cramped quarters, bad air and want of sunlight and pure water, and he secured the passage of the Tenement House Reform Law with a Tenement House Commission to see that it was properly enforced. He felt that there were abuses in the insurance department which needed correcting and that Lou Payne, a "dyed-in-the-wool" friend of Senator Platt, was a barrier to the reform, and at the risk of irritation and criticism he removed Mr. Payne and brought a healthful change in the Insurance Department.

With a heart always going out after the poor, and with a desire to help those of them who were not given a fair chance, the Governor set himself in earnest to improve the condition of the laboring class of the State. He secured an eight-hour law; strict factory laws, including the employers' liability, the protection of women and children in the industrial world; a cure for the worst evils of the sweatshop, and other helpful measures. He secured the building of a State hospital for the cure of consumptives in the first stage of this disease.

Perhaps the most conspicuous and far-reaching measure, which he pressed under tremendous opposition, was the Corporation Franchise Tax Law. He insisted that these mammoth corporations, which received such a generous franchise, should be made to pay their full share of the burden of the State. Some of the foremost Republicans of the State took issue with him on this subject and fought the measure bitterly. In answer to them he said, "It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing that, whereas the Populists and Socialists, and others, do not really correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form; on the contrary, we Republicans hold a just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other."

The friends of moral reform in New York had introduced a bill against professional boxing with a fee at the door. I had remembered how, as a sickly boy, those of his size had licked and bullied Theodore and how his father had engaged a trainer to instruct him in boxing, and how much physical benefit and courage he derived and how much genuine joy he got out of that severe form of athletics. And hence I knew that the bill for innocent boxing, in itself, would not be objectionable to him, but I knew also that he had a keen conscience that scented moral danger and that he would not allow any bill to go through which had anything wrong about it. The telegrams from the Capitol in the city papers reported that the anti-prizefighting bill had been halted and that it was going to be defeated, that Governor Roosevelt, who was constitutionally friendly to boxing, was not going to press it and was going to permit it to be defeated. Two or three papers had editorials commending such a course on his part. I was considerably excited when I entered the Governor's chamber after a hurried trip to Albany, and it may have been with a little feeling that I told him what I had seen in the papers and reminded him of the promise he made us that the bill should go through. "There is no man on earth whose word I would rather trust than yours,'' I said, "or on whose conscience I would rather rely on a question of public morals, and I know that you are misrepresented in the papers and editorials. I have come up to Albany more than anything else to ask you to give this bill the boost that will send it over the top."

He got much more excited than I was myself and said, "I am astonished that you should take those false telegrams, those lying editorials, and be disturbed about them, when I told you that, friendly as I was to boxing as an athletic exercise, I was totally opposed to the vices and demoralizing herds that cluster about and feed upon it, and that I would fight to the death any hint of professional gambling that might be associated with it," and then, referring to one paper and the editorial in it, he said, "This paper and its editorials always misunderstand and misrepresent me, and you wave the red rag before the bull in referring to them." He continued: "You know full well that on moral questions the church people and I are in perfect agreement. Why? I am one of the church people myself, and stand, work, and fight for the things which they represent. Our personal friendship is the outgrowth of our mutual support of the things for which the church stands." He had walked over to the window and lifted one foot up on the sill, and he put around me an arm which had the strength of a grizzly bear's paw and the tenderness of a woman pressing her babe to her heart, as he said, "I am not angry at you. I appreciate your feeling and your interest in the good morals of the State, and I am as anxious about them as you, but it does make me fighting mad to be lied about this way and made to appear on the wrong side of this moral question."

While Governor Roosevelt was pushing this constructive legislation he was endearing himself to the people, irrespective of party, and with his positive genius for politics was taking a very strong grip on the leadership of his own party in the State. His broad-minded, statesmanlike reform administration as Governor brought wider attention and regard for him in the country at large and made him a presidential possibility.