Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
a great political career; and he would have done good service for the
country in any position in which he might have been put.
There were other Republicans, like Isaac Hunt and Jonas van Duzer and
Walter Howe and Henry Sprague, who were among my close friends and
allies; and a gigantic one-eyed veteran of the Civil War, a gallant
General, Curtis from St. Lawrence County; and a capital fellow, whom
afterwards, when Governor, I put on the bench, Kruse, from Cattaraugus
County. Kruse was a German by birth; as far as I know, the only German
from Cattaraugus County at that time; and, besides being a German, he
was also a Prohibitionist. Among the Democrats were Hamden Robb and
Thomas Newbold, and Tom Welch of Niagara, who did a great service in
getting the State to set aside Niagara Falls Park--after a discouraging
experience with the first Governor before whom we brought the bill, who
listened with austere patience to our arguments in favor of the State
establishing a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question,
"But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people's money when just as
much water will run over the Falls without a park as with it?" Then
there were a couple of members from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello
and Pete Kelly.
Mike Costello had been elected as a Tammany man. He was as fearless as
he was honest. He came from Ireland, and had accepted the Tammany Fourth
of July orations as indicating the real attitude of that organization
towards the rights of the people. A month or two in Albany converted him
to a profound distrust of applied Tammany methods. He and I worked
hand in hand with equal indifference to our local machines. His machine
leaders warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the next
election, which they did; but he possessed a seasoned-hickory toughness
of ability to contend with adverse circumstances, and kept his head well
above water. A better citizen does not exist; and our friendship has
never faltered.
Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, well-educated young
fellow, an ardent believer in Henry George. At the beginning he and I
failed to understand each other or to get on together, for our theories
of government were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent in
active contests with men whose theories had nothing whatever to do with
their practices, Kelly and I found in our turn that it really did not
make much difference what our abstract theories were on questions that
were not before the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual
matters before the Legislature, the most important of which involved
questions of elementary morality, we were heartily at one. We began to
vote together and act together, and by the end of the session found that
in all practical matters that were up for action we thought together.
Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his theories, so that even
in theory we were coming closer together. He was ardent and generous; he
was a young lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had tempted
him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses
under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really
wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly
defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and good faith,
and when the bosses refused him a renomination, he appealed from them
to the people. When we both came up for reelection, I won easily in my
district, where circumstances conspired to favor me; and Kelly, with
exactly the same record that I had, except that it was more creditable
because he took his stand against greater odds, was beaten in his
district. Defeat to me would have meant merely chagrin; to Kelly it
meant terrible material disaster. He had no money. Like every rigidly
honest man, he had found that going into politics was expensive and that
his salary as Assemblyman did not cover the financial outgo. He had lost
his practice and he had incurred the ill will of the powerful, so that
it was impossible at the moment to pick up his practice again; and
the worry and disappointment affected him so much that shortly after
election he was struck down by sickness. Just before Christmas some of
us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits that he and
his family would be put out into the street before New Year. This was
prevented by the action of some of his friends who had served with him
in the Legislature, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took
up the practice of his profession. But he was a broken man. In the
Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Democrats from
Brooklyn was the Speaker--Alfred C. Chapin, the leader and the foremost
representative of the reform Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported.
A few years later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brooklyn
on a reform Democratic ticket. Shortly after his election I was asked
to speak at a meeting in a Brooklyn club at which various prominent
citizens, including the Mayor, were present. I spoke on civic decency,
and toward the close of my speech I sketched Kelly's career for my
audience, told them how he had stood up for the rights of the people of
Brooklyn, and how the people had failed to stand up for him, and the way
he had been punished, precisely because he had been a good citizen who
acted as a good citizen should act. I ended by saying that the reform
Democracy had now come into power, that Mr. Chapin was Mayor, and that I
very earnestly hoped recognition would at last be given to Kelly for the
fight he had waged at such bitter cost to himself. My words created some
impression, and Mayor Chapin at once said that he would take care of
Kelly and see that justice was done him. I went home that evening much
pleased. In the morning, at breakfast, I received a brief note from
Chapin in these words: "It was nine last evening when you finished
speaking of what Kelly had done, and when I said that I would take care
of him. At ten last night Kelly died." He had been dying while I was
making my speech, and he never knew that at last there was to be a
tardy recognition of what he had done, a tardy justification for the
sacrifices he had made. The man had fought, at heavy cost to himself and
with entire disinterestedness, for popular rights; but no recognition
for what he had done had come to him from the people, whose interest he
had so manfully upheld.
Where there is no chance of statistical or mathematical measurement, it
is very hard to tell just the degree to which conditions change from one
period to another. This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with such
a matter as corruption. Personally I am inclined to think that in public
life we are on the whole a little better and not a little worse than we
were thirty years ago, when I was serving in the New York Legislature.
I think the conditions are a little better in National, in State, and in
municipal politics. Doubtless there are points in which they are worse,
and there is an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it does seem
to me as if, on the whole, things had slightly improved.
When I went into politics, New York City was under the control of
Tammany, which was from time to time opposed by some other--and
evanescent--city Democratic organization. The up-country Democrats had
not yet fallen under Tammany sway, and were on the point of developing a
big country political boss in the shape of David B. Hill. The Republican
party was split into the Stalwart and Half-Breed factions. Accordingly
neither party had one dominant boss, or one dominant machine, each being
controlled by jarring and warring bosses and machines. The corruption
was not what it had been in the days of Tweed, when outside individuals
controlled the legislators like puppets. Nor was there any such
centralization of the boss system as occurred later. Many of the members
were under the control of local bosses or local machines. But the
corrupt work was usually done through the members directly.
Of course I never had anything in the nature of legal proof of
corruption, and the figures I am about to give are merely approximate.
But three years' experience convinced me, in the first place, that there
were a great many thoroughly corrupt men in the Legislature, perhaps a
third of the whole number; and, in the next place, that the honest men
outnumbered the corrupt men, and that, if it were ever possible to get
an issue of right and wrong put vividly and unmistakably before them
in a way that would arrest their attention and that would arrest the
attention of their constituents, we could count on the triumph of the
right. The trouble was that in most cases the issue was confused. To
read some kinds of literature one would come to the conclusion that the
only corruption in legislative circles was in the form of bribery by
corporations, and that the line was sharp between the honest man who was
always voting against corporations and the dishonest man who was always
bribed to vote for them. My experience was the direct contrary of
this. For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor a
corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, and in this
case not intended to be passed) to blackmail corporations. The majority
of the corrupt members would be found voting for the blackmailing bills
if they were not paid, and would also be found voting in the interests
of the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, as they were
always called, the "strike" bills, could themselves be roughly divided
into two categories: bills which it would have been proper to pass,
and those that it would not have been proper to pass. Some of the bills
aimed at corporations were utterly wild and improper; and of these a
proportion might be introduced by honest and foolish zealots, whereas
most of them were introduced by men who had not the slightest intention
of passing them, but who wished to be paid not to pass them. The most
profitable type of bill to the accomplished blackmailer, however, was a
bill aimed at a real corporate abuse which the corporation, either from
wickedness or folly, was unwilling to remedy. Of the measures introduced
in the interest of corporations there were also some that were proper
and some that were improper. The corrupt legislators, the "black horse
cavalry," as they were termed, would demand payment to vote as the
corporations wished, no matter whether the bill was proper or improper.
Sometimes, if the bill was a proper one, the corporation would have the
virtue or the strength of mind to refuse to pay for its passage, and
sometimes it would not.
A very slight consideration of the above state of affairs will show
how difficult it was at times to keep the issue clear, for honest and
dishonest men were continually found side by side voting now against and
now for a corporation measure, the one set from proper and the other set
from grossly improper motives. Of course part of the fault lay in the
attitudes of outsiders. It was very early borne in upon me that almost
equal harm was done by indiscriminate defense of, and indiscriminate
attack on, corporations. It was hard to say whether the man who prided
himself upon always antagonizing the corporations, or the man who, on
the plea that he was a good conservative, always stood up for them, was
the more mischievous agent of corruption and demoralization.
In one fight in the House over a bill as to which there was a bitter
contest between two New York City street railway organizations, I saw
lobbyists come down on the floor itself and draw venal men out into the
lobbies with almost no pretense of concealing what they were doing.
In another case in which the elevated railway corporations of New York