Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
City, against the protest of the Mayor and the other local authorities,
rushed through a bill remitting over half their taxes, some of the
members who voted for the measure probably thought it was right; but
every corrupt man in the House voted with them; and the man must
indeed have been stupid who thought that these votes were given
disinterestedly.
The effective fight against this bill for the revision of the elevated
railway taxes--perhaps the most openly crooked measure which during my
time was pushed at Albany--was waged by Mike Costello and myself. We
used to spend a good deal of time in industrious research into the
various bills introduced, so as to find out what their authors really
had in mind; this research, by the way, being highly unappreciated and
much resented by the authors. In the course of his researches Mike
had been puzzled by an unimportant bill, seemingly related to a
Constitutional amendment, introduced by a local saloon-keeper, whose
interests, as far as we knew, were wholly remote from the Constitution,
or from any form of abstract legal betterment. However, the measure
seemed harmless; we did not interfere; and it passed the House. Mike,
however, followed its career in the Senate, and at the last moment,
almost by accident, discovered that it had been "amended" by the
simple process of striking out everything after the enacting clause and
unobtrusively substituting the proposal to remit the elevated railway
taxes! The authors of the change wished to avoid unseemly publicity;
their hope was to slip the measure through the Legislature and have
it instantly signed by the Governor, before any public attention was
excited. In the Senate their plan worked to perfection. There was in
the Senate no fighting leadership of the forces of decency; and for such
leadership of the non-fighting type the representatives of corruption
cared absolutely nothing. By bold and adroit management the substitution
in the Senate was effected without opposition or comment. The bill (in
reality, of course, an absolutely new and undebated bill) then came back
to the House nominally as a merely amended measure, which, under the
rules, was not open to debate unless the amendment was first by vote
rejected. This was the great bill of the session for the lobby; and
the lobby was keenly alive to the need of quick, wise action. No public
attention whatever had so far been excited. Every measure was taken
to secure immediate and silent action. A powerful leader, whom the
beneficiaries of the bill trusted, a fearless and unscrupulous man,
of much force and great knowledge of parliamentary law, was put in the
chair. Costello and I were watched; and when for a moment we were out
of the House, the bill was brought over from the Senate, and the clerk
began to read it, all the black horse cavalry, in expectant mood, being
in their seats. But Mike Costello, who was in the clerk's room, happened
to catch a few words of what was being read. In he rushed, despatched a
messenger for me, and began a single-handed filibuster. The Speaker
pro tem called him to order. Mike continued to speak and protest;
the Speaker hammered him down; Mike continued his protests; the
sergeant-at-arms was sent to arrest and remove him; and then I bounced
in, and continued the protest, and refused to sit down or be silent.
Amid wild confusion the amendment was declared adopted, and the bill
was ordered engrossed and sent to the Governor. But we had carried our
point. The next morning the whole press rang with what had happened;
every detail of the bill, and every detail of the way it had been
slipped through the Legislature, were made public. All the slow and
cautious men in the House, who had been afraid of taking sides, now came
forward in support of us. Another debate was held on the proposal to
rescind the vote; the city authorities waked up to protest; the
Governor refused to sign the bill. Two or three years later, after much
litigation, the taxes were paid; in the newspapers it was stated that
the amount was over $1,500,000. It was Mike Costello to whom primarily
was due the fact that this sum was saved the public, and that the forces
of corruption received a stinging rebuff. He did not expect recognition
or reward for his services; and he got none. The public, if it knew of
what he had done, promptly forgot it. The machine did not forget it, and
turned him down at the next election.
One of the stand-by "strikes" was a bill for reducing the elevated
railway fare, which at that time was ten cents, to five cents. In
one Legislature the men responsible for the introduction of the bill
suffered such an extraordinary change of heart that when the bill
came up--being pushed by zealous radicals who really were honest--the
introducers actually voted against it! A number of us who had been very
doubtful about the principle of the bill voted for it simply because
we were convinced that money was being used to stop it, and we hated to
seem to side with the corruptionists. Then there came a wave of popular
feeling in its favor, the bill was reintroduced at the next session,
the railways very wisely decided that they would simply fight it on its
merits, and the entire black horse cavalry contingent, together with all
the former friends of the measure, voted against it. Some of us, who in
our anger at the methods formerly resorted to for killing the bill had
voted for it the previous year, with much heart-searching again voted
for it, as I now think unwisely; and the bill was vetoed by the then
Governor, Grover Cleveland. I believe the veto was proper, and those
who felt as I did supported the veto; for although it was entirely right
that the fare should be reduced to five cents, which was soon afterwards
done, the method was unwise, and would have set a mischievous precedent.
An instance of an opposite kind occurred in connection with a great
railway corporation which wished to increase its terminal facilities in
one of our great cities. The representatives of the railway brought
the bill to me and asked me to look into it, saying that they were well
aware that it was the kind of bill that lent itself to blackmail, and
that they wished to get it through on its merits, and invited the
most careful examination. I looked carefully into it, found that the
municipal authorities and the property-owners whose property was to be
taken favored it, and also found that it was an absolute necessity
from the standpoint of the city no less than from the standpoint of the
railway. So I said I would take charge of it if I had guarantees that no
money should be used and nothing improper done in order to push it. This
was agreed to. I was then acting as chairman of the committee before
which the bill went.
A very brief experience proved what I had already been practically sure
of, that there was a secret combination of the majority of the committee
on a crooked basis. On one pretext or another the crooked members of the
committee held the bill up, refusing to report it either favorably or
unfavorably. There were one or two members of the committee who were
pretty rough characters, and when I decided to force matters I was not
sure that we would not have trouble. There was a broken chair in the
room, and I got a leg of it loose and put it down beside me where it
was not visible, but where I might get at it in a hurry if necessary. I
moved that the bill be reported favorably. This was voted down without
debate by the "combine," some of whom kept a wooden stolidity of look,
while others leered at me with sneering insolence. I then moved that it
be reported unfavorably, and again the motion was voted down by the same
majority and in the same fashion. I then put the bill in my pocket and
announced that I would report it anyhow. This almost precipitated a
riot, especially when I explained, in answer to statements that my
conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Legislature, that in that
case I should give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the
men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for purposes
of blackmail. The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the
opportune production of the chair-leg had a sedative effect, and partly
owing to wise counsels from one or two of my opponents.
Accordingly I got the bill reported to the Legislature and put on the
calendar. But here it came to a dead halt. I think this was chiefly
because most of the newspapers which noticed the matter at all treated
it in such a cynical spirit as to encourage the men who wished to
blackmail. These papers reported the introduction of the bill, and said
that "all the hungry legislators were clamoring for their share of the
pie"; and they accepted as certain the fact that there was going to be a
division of "pie." This succeeded in frightening honest men, and also in
relieving the rogues; the former were afraid they would be suspected of
receiving money if they voted for the bill, and the latter were given a
shield behind which to stand until they were paid. I was wholly
unable to move the bill forward in the Legislature, and finally a
representative of the railway told me that he thought he would like
to take the bill out of my hands, that I did not seem able to get it
through, and that perhaps some "older and more experienced" leader could
be more successful. I was pretty certain what this meant, but of course
I had no kind of proof, and moreover I was not in a position to say that
I could promise success. Accordingly, the bill was given into the charge
of a veteran, whom I believe to have been a personally honest man, but
who was not inquisitive about the motives influencing his colleagues.
This gentleman, who went by a nickname which I shall incorrectly call
"the bald eagle of Weehawken," was efficient and knew his job. After a
couple of weeks a motion to put the bill through was made by "the
bald eagle"; the "black horse cavalry," whose feelings had undergone a
complete change in the intervening time, voted unanimously for it, in
company with all the decent members; and that was the end. Now here was
a bit of work in the interest of a corporation and in the interest of
a community, which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put
through on its merits. The blame for the failure lay primarily in the
supine indifference of the community to legislative wrong-doing, so long
as only the corporations were blackmailed.
Except as above mentioned, I was not brought in contact with big
business, save in the effort to impeach a certain judge. This judge
had been used as an instrument in their business by certain of the men
connected with the elevated railways and other great corporations at
that time. We got hold of his correspondence with one of these men, and
it showed a shocking willingness to use the judicial office in any way
that one of the kings of finance of that day desired. He had actually
held court in one of that financier's rooms. One expression in one of
the judge's letters to this financier I shall always remember: "I am
willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve your
vast interests." The curious thing was that I was by no means certain
that the judge himself was corrupt. He may have been; but I am inclined
to think that, aside from his being a man of coarse moral fiber, the
trouble lay chiefly in the fact that he had a genuine--if I had not
so often seen it, I would say a wholly inexplicable--reverence for
the possessor of a great fortune as such. He sincerely believed that
business was the end of existence, and that judge and legislator
alike should do whatever was necessary to favor it; and the bigger the
business the more he desired to favor it. Big business of the kind that