decent men frown on the activity, that is, on the efficiency, of the honest man who genuinely wishes to reform politics.
If efficiency is left solely to bad men, and if virtue is confined solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. When I entered politics there were, as there always had been—and as there always will be—any number of bad men in politics who were thoroughly efficient, and any number of good men who would like to have done lofty things in politics but who were thoroughly inefficient. If I wished to accomplish anything for the country, my business was to combine decency and efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his best to reduce those ideals to actual practice. This was my ideal, and to the best of my ability I strove to live up to it.
To a young man, life in the New York Legislature was always interesting and often entertaining. There was always a struggle of some kind on hand. Sometimes it was on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes it was on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, there were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor being usually of the unconscious kind. In one session of the Legislature the New York City Democratic representatives were split into two camps, and there were two rivals for leadership. One of these was a thoroughly good-hearted, happy-go-lucky person who was afterwards for several years in Congress. He had been a local magistrate and was called Judge. Generally he and I were friendly, but occasionally I did something that irritated him. He was always willing to vote for any other member's bill himself, and he regarded it as narrow-minded for any one to oppose one of his bills, especially if the opposition was upon the ground that it was unconstitutional—for his views of the Constitution were so excessively liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the Constitution don't touch little things like that," and then added, with an ingratiating smile, "Anyhow, I'd never allow the Constitution to come between friends." At the time I was looking over the proofs of Mr. Bryce's "American Commonwealth," and I told him the incident. He put it into the first edition of the "Commonwealth"; whether it is in the last edition or not, I cannot say.
On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what "lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill." His rival was a man of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in Ireland. He had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. The expedition, however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into New York politics instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I myself at one time occupied. He felt that his rival had gained too much glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him: "I would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting Latin on the floor of this House when you don't know the alpha and omayga of the language?"
There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above mentioned, a man whom I will call Brogan. He looked like a serious elderly frog. I never heard him speak more than once. It was before the Legislature was organized, or had adopted any rules; and each day the only business was for the clerk to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the following dialogue occurred:
Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k! The Clerk. The gentleman from New York. Brogan. I rise to a point of ordher under the rules! The Clerk. There are no rules. Brogan. Thin I object to them! The Clerk. There are no rules to object to. Brogan. Oh! [nonplussed; but immediately recovering himself]. Thin I move that they be amended until there ar-r-re!
The deadlock was tedious; and we hailed with joy such enlivening incidents as the above.
During my three years' service in the Legislature I worked on a very simple philosophy of government. It was that personal character and initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for the need of collective action. I shall never forget the men with whom I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts who helped us. We had made up our minds that we must not fight fire with fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in practical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in applied morality.
It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially when it happened that on one side there were corrupt and unscrupulous demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous reactionaries. Our effort was to hold the scales even between both. We tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates were anything but righteous. We endeavored to cut out the abuses of property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding those abuses. We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper assaults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property themselves did things that were wicked and corrupt. We were as yet by no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to the need of controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of politics with big business. In this matter I was not behind the rest of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of them, for no serious leader in political life then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these questions. One partial reason—not an excuse or a justification, but a partial reason—for my slowness in grasping the importance of action in these matters was the corrupt and unattractive nature of so many of the men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even at that date I had neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money king, and I did not regard the "money touch," when divorced from other qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. As recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight battles, in which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and powerful financiers and financial interests of the day. But most of the fights in which we were engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and they were more apt to be against that form of corruption which found its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which defended or advocated privilege. Fundamentally, our fight was part of the eternal war against the Powers that Prey; and we cared not a whit in what rank of life these powers were found.
To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government. A man who stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time, one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever the usefulness of any one has been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside. If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when the time and the need come together, without asking what the future holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can do better.
Chapter IV.
In Cowboy Land
Though
