one must work with all sorts and conditions of men is illuminating. This statement is related by his intimate friend Jacob A. Riis,[1] to whom Mr Roosevelt made it in commenting upon his first political success in the New York legislature.
“I suppose that my head was swelled. It would not be strange if it was. I stood out for my own opinion alone. I took the best ‘mugwump’ stand—my own conscience, my own judgment were to decide in all things. I would listen to no argument, no advice. I took the isolated peak on every issue, and my associates left me. When I looked around, before the session was well under way, I found myself alone. I was absolutely deserted. The people didn't understand. The men from Erie, from Suffolk, from anywhere, would not work with me. ‘He won't listen to anybody,’ they said, and I would not. My isolated peak had become a valley; every bit of influence I had was gone. The things I wanted to do I was powerless to accomplish. I looked the ground over, and made up my mind that there were several other excellent people there, with honest opinions of the right, even though they differed from me. I turned in to help them, and they turned to and gave me a hand. And so we were able to get things done. We did not agree in all things, but we did in some, and those we pulled at together. That was my first lesson in real politics. It is just this: if you are cast on a desert island with only a screw-driver, a hatchet and a chisel to make a boat with, why, go make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't. So with men. Here is my friend in Congress who is a good man, a strong man, but cannot be made to believe in some things in which I trust. It is too bad that he doesn't look at it as I do, but he does not, and we have to work together as we can. There is a point, of course, where a man must take the isolated peak and break with all his associates for clear principle: but until that time comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let him work with them for the best that can be obtained.”
In his successive offices Mr Roosevelt not merely exerted a strong influence upon the immediate community, whose official representative he was at the time being, but by reason both of his forceful personality and of the often unconventional, although always effective, methods of work which he employed he achieved a national prominence out of ordinary proportion to the importance of his official position. His record in the Assembly was such that his party nominated him for the mayoralty of the city of New York when he was absent on his ranch in Dakota. Although defeated in the mayoralty election, his work on behalf of the merit system, as opposed to the spoils system of politics, was such that he was made a Civil Service commissioner—probably the last office a politician would wish to hold who desired further promotion, for the conflict which a Civil Service commissioner must have with members of Congress and other party leaders on questions of patronage is usually, or, at any rate, has been in the past history of American politics, inevitably detrimental to further official advancement. He was taken from the Federal service in Washington to New York City by a reform mayor and put in charge of the police, because he had shown both physical and moral courage in fighting corruption of all sorts; and the New York police force at that time was thoroughly tainted with corruption, not in its rank and file, but among its superior officers, who used the power in their hands to extort money bribes chiefly from saloon-keepers, liquor-dealers, gamblers and prostitutes. As police commissioner Mr Roosevelt brought to his side every honest man on the force. By personal detective work, that is, by visiting police stations at unexpected times and by making the rounds at night of disorderly places which were suspected of violating the law, he not only displayed personal courage in positions of some danger, but aroused public opinion. The very sensation created by the novelty of his methods set standards and started reforms which have greatly improved the morale of the entire force. The hopelessly vicious policemen hated him, but no man ever had a stronger personal hold upon the great body of the honest officers—a hold which existed long after he left the police department, and was frequently expressed by members of the force as he passed through the city streets. When he became assistant-secretary of the navy, his work was not so publicly conspicuous, but in this office he gained an experience which was of great value in his administration of naval affairs during his presidency. It is doubtful if, without the experience of this secretaryship, he could have successfully originated and carried out the plan of sending the United States navy around the world in 1907. He went to the Spanish War as a volunteer against the urgent wishes of his political advisers, and in spite of the protests of some of his best and most intimate friends. The conditions in Cuba had long convinced him that war with Spain was inevitable, and that, for humane reasons alone, it was both right and necessary to drive the Spanish power out from the Carribean Sea. Having urged this view upon the country, when war was declared he felt that it would be inconsistent for him not to share personally in the perils of a conflict which he believed to be a just one, and which he had done as much as he could to bring about. His record in the war for efficiency and personal gallantry no doubt contributed largely to his nomination and election as governor of the state of New York; but he attained the governorship not on this ground alone. There are many instances in American politics of nominations made solely on a war record which have led to hopeless defeat in election. His work in the governorship brought him still more into prominence as a national leader. His uncompromising antagonism to political blackmail and bribery, and his determination to pursue the right, as he saw the right, only in a common-sense fashion, made bitter enemies on the one hand among the corrupt politicians, and, on the other hand, among theoretical reformers, and discussions raged in the newspapers about his executive acts, his speeches, and his official messages much as they raged during his seven years in the White House. If he had never reached the presidency he would probably have been a figure long remembered in American political life. But it was his course in the presidency that gave him his international reputation, and it is as President Roosevelt that future historians of American political life must chiefly discuss him.
Mr Roosevelt entered the presidency definitely committed to two principles which profoundly affected his course as chief executive of the United States. He had a well wrought-out belief in centralized authority in government and a passionate hatred of political and commercial corruption. He believed the United States to be a unified republic, a sovereign nation, and not a federation of independent states united only for mutual benefit and protection. He not only hated corruption per se, but he clearly saw that as efficiency has a greater power for good, so corruption has a greater power for evil in a strongly centralized government. He understood that political materialism, selfishness and corruption in federal administration afford the strongest possible argument for those who advocate strengthening the independent power of the separate states at the expense of nationalism. At the very outset of his administration he therefore set himself to work, not only to improve the personnel of the government service, but by exhortations in his messages and public speeches to arouse a sense of civic responsibility both among office-holders and among all the citizens. His official messages to Congress, probably more frequent, certainly much longer than those of any of his predecessors, were quite as often treatises on the moral principles of government as they were recommendations of specific legislative or administrative policies. The effect of his exhortations, as well as of his personal character and public acts, upon the standards and spirit of official life in the United States, was a pronounced one in attracting to the federal service a group of men who took up their work of public office with the same spirit of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice that actuates the military volunteer in time of war. No American president has done so much to discredit and destroy the old Jacksonian theory of party government that “to the victors belong the spoils,” and to create confidence in the practical success as well as the moral desirability of a system of appointments to office which rests upon efficiency and merit only. Mr Roosevelt not only attacked dishonesty in public affairs but in private business as well, asserting that “malefactors of great wealth” endeavour to
- ↑ In a volume entitled Roosevelt the Citizen, which, while it is frankly written as the enthusiastic tribute of a personal admirer, may be relied upon for accuracy in its statement of historical or biographical facts.
