Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
respectable women who give their lives to raise a nice family, and then
who become bitter from the injustice done us. Don't let this go into the
waste-basket, but think it over.
Yours respectfully,
---- ----.
New York, January 11, 1913.
_My Dear Mrs. ----_:
Most certainly your letter will not go into the waste-paper basket. I
shall think it over and show it to Mrs. Roosevelt. Will you let me
say, in the first place, that a woman who can write such a letter is
certainly not "hopelessly dull and uninteresting"! If the facts are as
you state, then I do not wonder that you feel bitterly and that you
feel that the gravest kind of injustice has been done you. I have always
tried to insist to men that they should do their duty to the women even
more than the women to them. Now I hardly like to write specifically
about your husband, because you might not like it yourself. It seems to
me almost incredible that any man who is the husband of a woman who has
borne him nine children should not feel that they and he are lastingly
her debtors. You say that you have had nine children, that you did all
your own work, including washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care
of the little ones as they came along; that you sewed everything they
wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the girls
while little; that you helped them all in their school work and started
them in music; but that as they grew older you got behind the times,
that you never belonged to a club or society or lodge, nor went to any
one's house, as you hardly had time to do so; and that in consequence
your husband outgrew you, and that your children look up to him and not
to you and feel that they have outgrown you. If these facts are so, you
have done a great and wonderful work, and the only explanation I can
possibly give of the attitude you describe on the part of your husband
and children is that they do not understand what it is that you have
done. I emphatically believe in unselfishness, but I also believe that
it is a mistake to let other people grow selfish, even when the other
people are husband and children.
Now, I suggest that you take your letter to me, of which I send you back
a copy, and this letter, and then select out of your family the one with
whom you feel most sympathy, whether it is your husband or one of your
children. Show the two letters to him or her, and then have a frank talk
about the matter. If any man, as you say, becomes ashamed of his wife
because she has lost her figure in bearing his children, then that man
is a hound and has every cause to be ashamed of himself. I am sending
you a little book called "Mother," by Kathleen Norris, which will give
you my views on the matter. Of course there are base and selfish men,
just as there are, although I believe in smaller number, base and
selfish women. Man and woman alike should profit by the teachings in
such a story as this of "Mother."
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
January 21, 1913.
_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:
My dear Sir--Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn't expecting
an answer. The next day the book came, and I thank you for your ready
sympathy and understanding. I feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevelt
would think I was hardly loyal to my husband and children; but knowing
of no other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind to your
notice, I told my personal story. If it will, in a small measure, be the
means of helping some one else by molding public opinion, through you, I
shall be content. You have helped me more than you know. Just having you
interested is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though
I shall refuse to be "laid on the shelf." . . . To think that you'd
bother to send me a book. I shall always treasure it both for the text
of the book and the sender. I read it with absorbing interest. The
mother was so splendid. She was ideal. The situations are so startlingly
real, just like what happens here every day with variations.
---- ----.
A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a homily; and these
two letters of my correspondent carry their own lesson.
Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he
has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to
consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward,
whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away from his wife's
standard of refinement and of duty.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW YORK POLICE
In the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong Police
Commissioner, and I served as President of the Police Commission of New
York for the two following years. Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor
the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave of that year
coincided with one of the city's occasional insurrections of virtue and
consequent turning out of Tammany from municipal control. He had been
elected on a non-partisan ticket--usually (although not always) the
right kind of ticket in municipal affairs, provided it represents not
a bargain among factions but genuine non-partisanship with the genuine
purpose to get the right men in control of the city government on a
platform which deals with the needs of the average men and women, the
men and women who work hard and who too often live hard. I was appointed
with the distinct understanding that I was to administer the Police
Department with entire disregard of partisan politics, and only from the
standpoint of a good citizen interested in promoting the welfare of all
good citizens. My task, therefore, was really simple. Mayor Strong had
already offered me the Street-Cleaning Department. For this work I did
not feel that I had any especial fitness. I resolutely refused to accept
the position, and the Mayor ultimately got a far better man for his
purpose in Colonel George F. Waring. The work of the Police Department,
however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it.
The man who was closest to me throughout my two years in the Police
Department was Jacob Riis. By this time, as I have said, I was
getting our social, industrial, and political needs into pretty fair
perspective. I was still ignorant of the extent to which big men of
great wealth played a mischievous part in our industrial and social
life, but I was well awake to the need of making ours in good faith
both an economic and an industrial as well as a political democracy. I
already knew Jake Riis, because his book "How the Other Half Lives" had
been to me both an enlightenment and an inspiration for which I felt I
could never be too grateful. Soon after it was written I had called at
his office to tell him how deeply impressed I was by the book, and that
I wished to help him in any practical way to try to make things a little
better. I have always had a horror of words that are not translated
into deeds, of speech that does not result in action--in other words,
I believe in realizable ideals and in realizing them, in preaching what
can be practiced and then in practicing it. Jacob Riis had drawn an
indictment of the things that were wrong, pitifully and dreadfully
wrong, with the tenement homes and the tenement lives of our
wage-workers. In his book he had pointed out how the city government,
and especially those connected with the departments of police and
health, could aid in remedying some of the wrongs.
As President of the Police Board I was also a member of the Health
Board. In both positions I felt that with Jacob Riis's guidance I would
be able to put a goodly number of his principles into actual effect.
He and I looked at life and its problems from substantially the same
standpoint. Our ideals and principles and purposes, and our beliefs as
to the methods necessary to realize them, were alike. After the election
in 1894 I had written him a letter which ran in part as follows:
It is very important to the city to have a business man's Mayor, but it
is more important to have a workingman's Mayor; and I want Mr. Strong to
be that also. . . . It is an excellent thing to have rapid transit, but
it is a good deal more important, if you look at matters with a proper
perspective, to have ample playgrounds in the poorer quarters of the
city, and to take the children off the streets so as to prevent them
growing up toughs. In the same way it is an admirable thing to have
clean streets; indeed, it is an essential thing to have them; but it
would be a better thing to have our schools large enough to give ample
accommodation to all who should be pupils and to provide them with
proper playgrounds.
And I added, while expressing my regret that I had not been able to
accept the street-cleaning commissionership, that "I would have
been delighted to smash up the corrupt contractors and put the
street-cleaning force absolutely out of the domain of politics."
This was nineteen years ago, but it makes a pretty good platform in
municipal politics even to-day--smash corruption, take the municipal
service out of the domain of politics, insist upon having a Mayor who
shall be a workingman's Mayor even more than a business man's Mayor, and
devote all attention possible to the welfare of the children.
Therefore, as I viewed it, there were two sides to the work: first, the
actual handling of the Police Department; second, using my position to
help in making the city a better place in which to live and work for
those to whom the conditions of life and labor were hardest. The two
problems were closely connected; for one thing never to be forgotten in
striving to better the conditions of the New York police force is the
connection between the standard of morals and behavior in that force and
the general standard of morals and behavior in the city at large. The
form of government of the Police Department at that time was such as
to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results. It
represented that device of old-school American political thought, the
desire to establish checks and balances so elaborate that no man shall
have power enough to do anything very bad. In practice this always means
that no man has power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad
is done anyhow.
In most positions the "division of powers" theory works unmitigated
mischief. The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to
render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do
a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the
wrong kind of man. What is normally needed is the concentration in the
hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample power to
enable him or them to do the work that is necessary; and then the
devising of means to hold these men fully responsible for the exercise
of that power by the people. This of course means that, if the people
are willing to see power misused, it will be misused. But it also means
that if, as we hold, the people are fit for self-government--if, in
other words, our talk and our institutions are not shams--we will get
good government. I do not contend that my theory will automatically
bring good government. I do contend that it will enable us to get as
good government as we deserve, and that the other way will not.
The then government of the Police Department was so devised as to render
it most difficult to accomplish anything good, while the field for
intrigue and conspiracy was limitless. There were four Commissioners,
two supposed to belong to one party and two to the other, although, as
a matter of fact, they never divided on party lines. There was a Chief,
appointed by the Commissioners, but whom they could not remove without a
regular trial subject to review by the courts of law. This Chief and