Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
is allied with politics thoroughly appreciated the usefulness of such a
judge, and every effort was strained to protect him. We fought hard--by
"we" I mean some thirty or forty legislators, both Republicans and
Democrats--but the "black horse cavalry," and the timid good men, and
the dull conservative men, were all against us; and the vote in the
Legislature was heavily against impeachment. The minority of the
committee that investigated him, with Chapin at its head, recommended
impeachment; the argument for impeachment before the committee was made
by Francis Lynde Stetson.
It was my first experience of the kind. Various men whom I had known
well socially and had been taught to look up to, prominent business men
and lawyers, acted in a way which not only astounded me, but which I
was quite unable to reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their
high standing--I was little more than a year out of college at the time.
Generally, as has been always the case since, they were careful to avoid
any direct conversation with me on a concrete case of what we now
call "privilege" in business and in politics, that is, of the alliance
between business and politics which represents improper favors rendered
to some men in return for improper conduct on the part of others being
ignored or permitted.
One member of a prominent law firm, an old family friend, did, however,
take me out to lunch one day, evidently for the purpose of seeing just
what it was that I wished and intended to do. I believe he had a
genuine personal liking for me. He explained that I had done well in the
Legislature; that it was a good thing to have made the "reform play,"
that I had shown that I possessed ability such as would make me useful
in the right kind of law office or business concern; but that I must not
overplay my hand; that I had gone far enough, and that now was the time
to leave politics and identify myself with the right kind of people, the
people who would always in the long run control others and obtain the
real rewards which were worth having. I asked him if that meant that I
was to yield to the ring in politics. He answered somewhat impatiently
that I was entirely mistaken (as in fact I was) about there being merely
a political ring, of the kind of which the papers were fond of talking;
that the "ring," if it could be called such--that is, the inner
circle--included certain big business men, and the politicians, lawyers,
and judges who were in alliance with and to a certain extent dependent
upon them, and that the successful man had to win his success by the
backing of the same forces, whether in law, business, or politics.
This conversation not only interested me, but made such an impression
that I always remembered it, for it was the first glimpse I had of that
combination between business and politics which I was in after years so
often to oppose. In the America of that day, and especially among
the people whom I knew, the successful business man was regarded by
everybody as preeminently the good citizen. The orthodox books on
political economy, not only in America but in England, were written
for his especial glorification. The tangible rewards came to him, the
admiration of his fellow-citizens of the respectable type was apt to
be his, and the severe newspaper moralists who were never tired of
denouncing politicians and political methods were wont to hold up
"business methods" as the ideal which we were to strive to introduce
into political life. Herbert Croly, in "The Promise of American Life,"
has set forth the reasons why our individualistic democracy--which
taught that each man was to rely exclusively on himself, was in no way
to be interfered with by others, and was to devote himself to his own
personal welfare--necessarily produced the type of business man
who sincerely believed, as did the rest of the community, that the
individual who amassed a big fortune was the man who was the best and
most typical American.
In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were mainly problems
of honesty and decency and of legislative and administrative efficiency.
They represented the effort, the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to
get efficient and honest government. But as yet I understood little of
the effort which was already beginning, for the most part under very bad
leadership, to secure a more genuine social and industrial justice. Nor
was I especially to blame for this. The good citizens I then knew best,
even when themselves men of limited means--men like my colleague Billy
O'Neill, and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow--were no more awake
than I was to the changing needs the changing times were bringing.
Their outlook was as narrow as my own, and, within its limits, as
fundamentally sound.
I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, even though as
yet it was not broad enough. We were no respecters of persons. Where our
vision was developed to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we
opposed it whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found that
it needed much more courage to stand up openly against labor men when
they were wrong than against capitalists when they were wrong. The
sins against labor are usually committed, and the improper services to
capitalists are usually rendered, behind closed doors. Very often the
man with the moral courage to speak in the open against labor when it is
wrong is the only man anxious to do effective work for labor when labor
is right.
The only kinds of courage and honesty which are permanently useful to
good institutions anywhere are those shown by men who decide all cases
with impartial justice on grounds of conduct and not on grounds of
class. We found that in the long run the men who in public blatantly
insisted that labor was never wrong were the very men who in private
could not be trusted to stand for labor when it was right. We grew
heartily to distrust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless
it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that
type of "reformer" is as noxious now as he ever was. The loud-mouthed
upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied
with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how
flagrant, if committed nominally in the interest of labor, has either a
warped mind or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man.
It was largely the indignant and contemptuous dislike aroused in our
minds by the demagogues of this class which then prevented those of us
whose instincts at bottom were sound from going as far as we ought to
have gone along the lines of governmental control of corporations and
governmental interference on behalf of labor.
I did, however, have one exceedingly useful experience. A bill was
introduced by the Cigar-Makers' Union to prohibit the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses. I was appointed one of a committee of three
to investigate conditions in the tenement-houses and see if legislation
should be had. Of my two colleagues on the committee, one took no
interest in the measure and privately said he did not think it was
right, but that he had to vote for it because the labor unions were
strong in his district and he was pledged to support the bill. The
other, a sporting Tammany man who afterwards abandoned politics for the
race-track, was a very good fellow. He told me frankly that he had to be
against the bill because certain interests which were all-powerful and
with which he had dealings required him to be against it, but that I
was a free agent, and that if I would look into the matter he believed I
would favor the legislation. As a matter of fact, I had supposed I would
be against the legislation, and I rather think that I was put on the
committee with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were against
it; it was contrary to the principles of political economy of the
_laissez-faire_ kind; and the business men who spoke to me about it
shook their heads and said that it was designed to prevent a man doing
as he wished and as he had a right to do with what was his own.
However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question
made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of
practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the
continuance of the conditions which I saw. These conditions rendered
it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live
so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties
of American citizenship. I visited the tenement-houses once with
my colleagues of the committee, once with some of the labor union
representatives, and once or twice by myself. In a few of the
tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the
work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or
sleeping or living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however,
there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of
manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and
night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms--sometimes in one room.
I have always remembered one room in which two families were living. On
my inquiry as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was
a boarder with one of the families. There were several children,
three men, and two women in this room. The tobacco was stowed about
everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were
scraps of food. The men, women, and children in this room worked by day
and far on into the evening, and they slept and ate there. They were
Bohemians, unable to speak English, except that one of the children knew
enough to act as interpreter.
Instead of opposing the bill I ardently championed it. It was a poorly
drawn measure, and the Governor, Grover Cleveland, was at first doubtful
about signing it. The Cigar-makers' Union then asked me to appear before
the Governor and argue for it. I accordingly did so, acting as spokesman
for the battered, undersized foreigners who represented the Union
and the workers. The Governor signed the bill. Afterwards this
tenement-house cigar legislation was declared invalid by the Court
of Appeals in the Jacobs decision. Jacobs was one of the rare
tenement-house manufacturers of cigars who occupied quite a suite
of rooms, so that in his case the living conditions were altogether
exceptional. What the reason was which influenced those bringing the
suit to select the exceptional instead of the average worker I do not
know; of course such action was precisely the action which those most
interested in having the law broken down were anxious to see taken.
The Court of Appeals declared the law unconstitutional, and in their
decision the judges reprobated the law as an assault upon the "hallowed"
influences of "home." It was this case which first waked me to a dim and
partial understanding of the fact that the courts were not necessarily
the best judges of what should be done to better social and industrial
conditions. The judges who rendered this decision were well-meaning
men. They knew nothing whatever of tenement-house conditions; they
knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and labor, of
three-fourths of their fellow-citizens in great cities. They knew
legalism, but not life. Their choice of the words "hallowed" and "home,"
as applicable to the revolting conditions attending the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses, showed that they had no idea what it was
that they were deciding. Imagine the "hallowed" associations of a "home"
consisting of one room where two families, one of them with a boarder,
live, eat, and work! This decision completely blocked tenement-house
reform legislation in New York for a score of years, and hampers it to