Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
combine both idealism and efficiency. At that time the public conscience
was still dormant as regards many species of political and business
misconduct, as to which during the next decade it became sensitive. I
had to work with the tools at hand and to take into account the feeling
of the people, which I have already described. My aim was persistently
to refuse to be put in a position where what I did would seem to be a
mere faction struggle against Senator Platt. My aim was to make a fight
only when I could so manage it that there could be no question in the
minds of honest men that my prime purpose was not to attack Mr. Platt
or any one else except as a necessary incident to securing clean and
efficient government.
In each case I did my best to persuade Mr. Platt not to oppose me. I
endeavored to make it clear to him that I was not trying to wrest the
organization from him; and I always gave him in detail the reasons why I
felt I had to take the position I intended to adopt. It was only after I
had exhausted all the resources of my patience that I would finally, if
he still proved obstinate, tell him that I intended to make the fight
anyhow. As I have said, the Senator was an old and feeble man in
physique, and it was possible for him to go about very little. Until
Friday evening he would be kept at his duties at Washington, while I was
in Albany. If I wished to see him it generally had to be at his hotel
in New York on Saturday, and usually I would go there to breakfast with
him. The one thing I would not permit was anything in the nature of a
secret or clandestine meeting. I always insisted on going openly. Solemn
reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid
attention to the name and not the thing, were much exercised over my
"breakfasting with Platt." Whenever I breakfasted with him they became
sure that the fact carried with it some sinister significance. The
worthy creatures never took the trouble to follow the sequence of facts
and events for themselves. If they had done so they would have seen that
any series of breakfasts with Platt always meant that I was going to
do something he did not like, and that I was trying, courteously and
frankly, to reconcile him to it. My object was to make it as easy as
possible for him to come with me. As long as there was no clash between
us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came
or was imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was always
the prelude to some active warfare.[*] In every instance I substantially
carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way in which
I had originally hoped.
[*] To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine
to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899. He had been trying to
get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another
Judge Y. I wrote: "There is a strong feeling among the
judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought
not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see
my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the
solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to
adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at
8:30."
There were various measures to which he gave a grudging and querulous
assent without any break being threatened. I secured the reenactment
of the Civil Service Law, which under my predecessor had very foolishly
been repealed. I secured a mass of labor legislation, including the
enactment of laws to increase the number of factory inspectors, to
create a Tenement House Commission (whose findings resulted in further
and excellent legislation to improve housing conditions), to regulate
and improve sweatshop labor, to make the eight-hour and prevailing rate
of wages law effective, to secure the genuine enforcement of the act
relating to the hours of railway workers, to compel railways to equip
freight trains with air-brakes, to regulate the working hours of women
and protect both women and children from dangerous machinery, to enforce
good scaffolding provisions for workmen on buildings, to provide seats
for the use of waitresses in hotels and restaurants, to reduce the
hours of labor for drug-store clerks, to provide for the registration of
laborers for municipal employment. I tried hard but failed to secure an
employers' liability law and the state control of employment offices.
There was hard fighting over some of these bills, and, what was much
more serious, there was effort to get round the law by trickery and by
securing its inefficient enforcement. I was continually helped by men
with whom I had gotten in touch while in the Police Department; men such
as James Bronson Reynolds, through whom I first became interested in
settlement work on the East Side. Once or twice I went suddenly down to
New York City without warning any one and traversed the tenement-house
quarters, visiting various sweat-shops picked at random. Jake Riis
accompanied me; and as a result of our inspection we got not only
an improvement in the law but a still more marked improvement in its
administration. Thanks chiefly to the activity and good sense of Dr.
John H. Pryor, of Buffalo, and by the use of every pound of pressure
which as Governor I could bring to bear in legitimate fashion--including
a special emergency message--we succeeded in getting through a bill
providing for the first State hospital for incipient tuberculosis. We
got valuable laws for the farmer; laws preventing the adulteration of
food products (which laws were equally valuable to the consumer), and
laws helping the dairyman. In addition to labor legislation I was able
to do a good deal for forest preservation and the protection of our
wild life. All that later I strove for in the Nation in connection with
Conservation was foreshadowed by what I strove to obtain for New York
State when I was Governor; and I was already working in connection with
Gifford Pinchot and Newell. I secured better administration, and some
improvement in the laws themselves. The improvement in administration,
and in the character of the game and forest wardens, was secured partly
as the result of a conference in the executive chamber which I held with
forty of the best guides and woodsmen of the Adirondacks.
As regards most legislation, even that affecting labor and the forests,
I got on fairly well with the machine. But on the two issues in which
"big business" and the kind of politics which is allied to big business
were most involved we clashed hard--and clashing with Senator Platt
meant clashing with the entire Republican organization, and with the
organized majority in each house of the Legislature. One clash was in
connection with the Superintendent of Insurance, a man whose office made
him a factor of immense importance in the big business circles of New
York. The then incumbent of the office was an efficient man, the boss
of an up-State county, a veteran politician and one of Mr. Platt's
right-hand men. Certain investigations which I made--in the course of
the fight--showed that this Superintendent of Insurance had been engaged
in large business operations in New York City. These operations had
thrown him into a peculiarly intimate business contact of one sort and
another with various financiers with whom I did not deem it expedient
that the Superintendent of Insurance, while such, should have any
intimate and secret money-making relations. Moreover, the gentleman
in question represented the straitest sect of the old-time spoils
politicians. I therefore determined not to reappoint him. Unless I could
get his successor confirmed, however, he would stay in under the law,
and the Republican machine, with the assistance of Tammany, expected to
control far more than a majority of all the Senators.
Mr. Platt issued an ultimatum to me that the incumbent must be
reappointed or else that he would fight, and that if he chose to fight
the man would stay in anyhow because I could not oust him--for under the
New York Constitution the assent of the Senate was necessary not only
to appoint a man to office but to remove him from office. As always with
Mr. Platt, I persistently refused to lose my temper, no matter what
he said--he was much too old and physically feeble for there to be any
point of honor in taking up any of his remarks--and I merely explained
good-humoredly that I had made up my mind and that the gentleman
in question would not be retained. As for not being able to get his
successor confirmed, I pointed out that as soon as the Legislature
adjourned I could and would appoint another man temporarily. Mr.
Platt then said that the incumbent would be put back as soon as the
Legislature reconvened; I admitted that this was possible, but
added cheerfully that I would remove him again just as soon as that
Legislature adjourned, and that even though I had an uncomfortable time
myself, I would guarantee to make my opponents more uncomfortable still.
We parted without any sign of reaching an agreement.
There remained some weeks before final action could be taken, and the
Senator was confident that I would have to yield. His most efficient
allies were the pretended reformers, most of them my open or covert
enemies, who loudly insisted that I must make an open fight on the
Senator himself and on the Republican organization. This was what he
wished, for at that time there was no way of upsetting him within the
Republican party; and, as I have said, if I had permitted the contest
to assume the shape of a mere faction fight between the Governor and the
United States Senator, I would have insured the victory of the
machine. So I blandly refused to let the thing become a personal fight,
explaining again and again that I was perfectly willing to appoint an
organization man, and naming two or three whom I was willing to appoint,
but also explaining that I would not retain the incumbent, and would not
appoint any man of his type. Meanwhile pressure on behalf of the said
incumbent began to come from the business men of New York.
The Superintendent of Insurance was not a man whose ill will the big
life insurance companies cared to incur, and company after company
passed resolutions asking me to reappoint him, although in private some
of the men who signed these resolutions nervously explained that they
did not mean what they had written, and hoped I would remove the man. A
citizen prominent in reform circles, marked by the Cato-like austerity
of his reform professions, had a son who was a counsel for one of the
insurance companies. The father was engaged in writing letters to the
papers demanding in the name of uncompromising virtue that I should not
only get rid of the Superintendent of Insurance, but in his place should
appoint somebody or other personally offensive to Senator Platt--which
last proposition, if adopted, would have meant that the Superintendent
of Insurance would have stayed in, for the reasons I have already given.
Meanwhile the son came to see me on behalf of the insurance company he
represented and told me that the company was anxious that there should
be a change in the superintendency; that if I really meant to fight,
they thought they had influence with four of the State Senators,
Democrats and Republicans, whom they could get to vote to confirm
the man I nominated, but that they wished to be sure that I would not
abandon the fight, because it would be a very bad thing for them if I
started the fight and then backed down. I told my visitor that he need
be under no apprehensions, that I would certainly see the fight through.
A man who has much to do with that kind of politics which concerns both
New York politicians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily