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CHAPTER III

The Mayoralty Fight of  1886

M
R. ROOSEVELT had bought his ranch in the " Bad Lands " of Northwest Dakota near the Montana line on the Little Missouri River in the summer of 1883, and had invested a good deal of his patrimony in the cattle business. He had returned to his ranch after the convention of 1884, and was much absorbed in all the phases of frontier life, remaining almost continuously for the following two years. He had published a book on various hunting experiences in 1883. He founded the Boone and Crockett Club, and sought to know by experience as well as by study all those phases of pioneer life that had made the American people what they are.
Yet he had by no means severed the ties that bound him to New York. Like the Roosevelts before him, he had grown up at once a townsman of Manhattan and a countryman of Long Island. It would not have been like him to transplant himself altogether. He could identify himself with the Dakota pioneer experiences, but it would not have been in keeping with his nature to break the continuity of the Roosevelt life in and about the great town that had grown up where the original Roosevelts had settled.
Even while he was writing his books on ranch life and the pursuit of large game in the Rockies, and while at work on his chief historical production, " The Winning of the West," he also produced a history of the City of New York which was published in 1890. He had spent some part of each winter in New York City; and when the municipal reformers brought him out as their candidate for mayor in 1886 he could not refuse.
The Republican party promptly made him its candidate. His father had been mayor before him, and he himself while in the legislature had only recently secured charter
changes for the metropolis and given great	MR  ROOSEVELT
attention to its affairs.    Mr. Henry George,	<in hunting costume of the early

The Mayoralty Fight of  1886

15

THE   MAYORALTY   CONTEST—THEY   HAD   THEIR    LITTLE   BOOMS
From the New York World, October 17, 1886
who was then at the height of his fame, had come from San Francisco to live in New York; and the labor party, together with the believers in Mr. George's single-tax theory, made him a candidate for the chief city office. Tammany Hall and the Democratic party nominated an able business man and member of Congress, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, son-in-law of Peter Cooper.
It was a stirring campaign. As election day approached, certain conservative business interests were alarmed lest Henry George should win, and to make sure of his defeat they decided to vote with the Democrats for Mr. Hewitt. The alarm about Mr. George is well expressed in a cartoon from Harper's Weekly that we reproduce. Mr. Roosevelt received more than 60,000 votes; Mr. George more than 68,000, and Mr. Hewitt more

16

A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career

THE   RIVAL GUIDES
(Roosevelt,   Hewitt,   and   Henry  George   as   mayoralty   candidates.)
A Worthy Old Gentleman of Manhattan City (Father Knickerbocker), accustomed to take to the woods every other November, was accosted by two experienced guides, each bent on taking him a different path. They were so enthusiastic over their routes that while belaboring one another with arguments, an Incompetent Guide (Henry George) sprang from the brush, and seizing the old gentleman by the throat, attempted to drag him into a very dangerous by-way much frequented by lawless men, when—
moral.—There  can  be  no  moral  to  this  until  the Freebooter is taken  from the scene.
From  Harper's   Weekly,  October 30,  1886
than 90,000.    New York at that time was a strong Democratic city, and Mr. Roosevelt's vote, under all the circumstances, was highly creditable.
His defeat was not a disappointment. He had sprung unexpectedly into the forefront of political life within a year or two after leaving college, and he heeded an interval of private life for further reading and study, the building up of his mental and physical constitution, and the ordering of his -personal and private affairs.