Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
same moral level for the two sexes must be performed by raising the
level for the man, not by lowering it for the woman; and the fact that
society must recognize its duty in no shape or way relieves, not even
to the smallest degree, the individual from doing his or her duty.
Sentimentality which grows maudlin on behalf of the willful prostitute
is a curse; to confound her with the entrapped or coerced girl, the real
white slave, is both foolish and wicked. There are evil women just as
there are evil men, naturally depraved girls just as there are naturally
depraved young men; and the right and wise thing, the just thing, to
them, and the generous thing to innocent girls and decent men, is to
wage stern war against the evil creatures of both sexes.
In company with Jacob Riis, I did much work that was not connected with
the actual discipline of the force or indeed with the actual work of
the force. There was one thing which he and I abolished--police
lodging-houses, which were simply tramp lodging-houses, and a fruitful
encouragement to vagrancy. Those who read Mr. Riis's story of his own
life will remember the incidents that gave him from actual personal
experience his horror of these tramp lodging-houses. As member of the
Health Board I was brought into very close relations with the conditions
of life in the tenement-house districts. Here again I used to visit the
different tenement-house regions, usually in company with Riis, to
see for myself what the conditions were. It was largely this personal
experience that enabled me while on the Health Board to struggle not
only zealously, but with reasonable efficiency and success, to improve
conditions. We did our share in making forward strides in the matter of
housing the working people of the city with some regard to decency and
comfort.
The midnight trips that Riis and I took enabled me to see what the
Police Department was doing, and also gave me personal insight into some
of the problems of city life. It is one thing to listen in perfunctory
fashion to tales of overcrowded tenements, and it is quite another
actually to see what that overcrowding means, some hot summer night, by
even a single inspection during the hours of darkness. There was a very
hot spell one midsummer while I was Police Commissioner, and most of
each night I spent walking through the tenement-house districts and
visiting police stations to see what was being done. It was a tragic
week. We did everything possible to alleviate the suffering. Much of it
was heartbreaking, especially the gasping misery of the little children
and of the worn-out mothers. Every resource of the Health Department, of
the Police Department, and even the Fire Department (which flooded the
hot streets) was taxed in the effort to render service. The heat killed
such multitudes of horses that the means at our disposal for removing
the poor dead beasts proved quite inadequate, although every nerve was
strained to the limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints
from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, festering
in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible man sent us furious
denunciations, until we were at last able to send a big dray to drag
away the horse that lay dead before his shop door. The huge dray already
contained eleven other dead horses, and when it reached this particular
door it broke down, and it was hours before it could be moved. The
unfortunate man who had thus been cursed with a granted wish closed
his doors in despair and wrote us a final pathetic letter in which he
requested us to remove either the horses or his shop, he didn't care
which.
I have spoken before of my experience with the tenement-house cigar
factory law which the highest court of New York State declared
unconstitutional. My experience in the Police Department taught me
that not a few of the worst tenement-houses were owned by wealthy
individuals, who hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade
the courts that it was "unconstitutional" to insist on the betterment of
conditions. These business men and lawyers were very adroit in using
a word with fine and noble associations to cloak their opposition to
vitally necessary movements for industrial fair play and decency. They
made it evident that they valued the Constitution, not as a help
to righteousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against
unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became more set than
ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers,
judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the
Constitution a fetich for the prevention of the work of social reform,
for the prevention of work in the interest of those men, women, and
children on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ freely every
governmental agency.
Occasionally during the two years we had to put a stop to riotous
violence, and now and then on these occasions some of the labor union
leaders protested against the actions of the police. By this time I was
becoming a strong believer in labor unions, a strong believer in the
rights of labor. For that very reason I was all the more bound to see
that lawlessness and disorder were put down, and that no rioter was
permitted to masquerade under the guise of being a friend of labor or a
sympathizer with labor. I was scrupulous to see that the labor men had
fair play; that, for instance, they were allowed to picket just so far
as under the law picketing could be permitted, so that the strikers had
ample opportunity peacefully to persuade other labor men not to take
their places. But I made it clearly and definitely understood that under
no circumstances would I permit violence or fail to insist upon the
keeping of order. If there were wrongs, I would join with a full heart
in striving to have them corrected. But where there was violence
all other questions had to drop until order was restored. This is a
democracy, and the people have the power, if they choose to exercise
it, to make conditions as they ought to be made, and to do this strictly
within the law; and therefore the first duty of the true democrat, of
the man really loyal to the principles of popular government, is to see
that law is enforced and order upheld. It was a peculiar gratification
to me that so many of the labor leaders with whom I was thrown in
contact grew cordially to accept this view. When I left the Department,
several called upon me to say how sorry they were that I was not to
continue in office. One, the Secretary of the Journeyman Bakers' and
Confectioners' International Union, Henry Weismann, wrote me expressing
his regret that I was going, and his appreciation as a citizen of what
I had done as Police Commissioner; he added: "I am particularly
grateful for your liberal attitude toward organized labor, your cordial
championship of those speaking in behalf of the toilers, and your
evident desire to do the right thing as you saw it at whatever cost."
Some of the letters I received on leaving the Department were from
unexpected sources. Mr. E. L. Godkin, an editor who in international
matters was not a patriotic man, wrote protesting against my taking the
Assistant-Secretaryship of the Navy, and adding: "I have a concern, as
the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief that in New York you
are doing the greatest work of which any American to-day is capable,
and exhibiting to the young men of the country the spectacle of a very
important office administered by a man of high character in the most
efficient way amid a thousand difficulties. As a lesson in politics I
cannot think of anything more instructive."
About the same time I had a letter from Mr. (afterwards Ambassador)
James Bryce, also expressing regret that I was leaving the Police
Department, but naturally with much more appreciation of the work that
was to be done in the Navy Department. This letter I quote, with his
permission, because it conveys a lesson to those who are inclined always
to think that the conditions of the present time are very bad. It was
written July 7, 1897. Mr. Bryce spoke of the possibility of coming to
America in a month or so, and continued: "I hope I may have a chance
of seeing you if I do get over, and of drawing some comfort from you
as regards your political phenomena, which, so far as I can gather
from those of your countrymen I have lately seen, furnish some good
opportunities for a persistent optimist like myself to show that he is
not to be lightly discouraged. Don't suppose that things are specially
'nice,' as a lady would say, in Europe either. They are not." Mr. Bryce
was a very friendly and extraordinary competent observer of things
American; and there was this distinct note of discouragement about our
future in the intimate letter he was thus sending. Yet this was at the
very time when the United States was entering on a dozen years during
which our people accomplished more good, and came nearer realizing the
possibilities of a great, free, and conscientious democracy, than during
any other dozen years in our history, save only the years of Lincoln's
Presidency and the period during which the Nation was founded.
CHAPTER VII
THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY
I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and
in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the
possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This
is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from
experience.
There would have been no war in 1812 if, in the previous decade,
America, instead of announcing that "peace was her passion," instead of
acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts war, had been willing to
go to the expense of providing a fleet of a score of ships of the line.
However, in that case, doubtless the very men who in the actual
event deplored the loss of life and waste of capital which their own
supineness had brought about would have loudly inveighed against the
"excessive and improper cost of armaments"; so it all came to about the
same thing in the end.
There is no more thoroughgoing international Mrs. Gummidge, and no
more utterly useless and often utterly mischievous citizen, than the
peace-at-any-price, universal-arbitration type of being, who is always
complaining either about war or else about the cost of the armaments
which act as the insurance against war. There is every reason why
we should try to limit the cost of armaments, as these tend to grow
excessive, but there is also every reason to remember that in the
present stage of civilization a proper armament is the surest guarantee
of peace--and is the only guarantee that war, if it does come, will not
mean irreparable and overwhelming disaster.
In the spring of 1897 President McKinley appointed me Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. I owed the appointment chiefly to the efforts of
Senator H. C. Lodge of Massachusetts, who doubtless was actuated mainly
by his long and close friendship for me, but also--I like to believe--by
his keen interest in the navy. The first book I had ever published,
fifteen years previously, was "The History of the Naval War of 1812";
and I have always taken the interest in the navy which every good
American ought to take. At the time I wrote the book, in the early
eighties, the navy had reached its nadir, and we were then utterly
incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all.
Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to build up
a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout steps we took to
accomplish our purpose. In the reaction after the colossal struggle of
the Civil War our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole