Nothing had prepared Theodore for the wretchedness he beheld, the stench and filth. Some scenes would stay with him the rest of his days.
I have always remembered [he would write nearly forty years later] one room in which two families were living.... 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 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.
It was because so few legislators knew of such conditions, Gompers said, that nothing was done to change the system or alleviate the distress. Simply to survive, such people had to work twelve to eighteen hours a day. Infectious disease was rampant among them. The manufacturers owned the tenements and so for the majority of workers there seemed no way out.
His rounds with Gompers were enough to settle Theodore’s mind. It made no difference how many theories of economics or of the rights of the individual might argue against the bill, he would back it. He returned for two further inspection tours, once with his two subcommittee colleagues in tow, another time by himself. When the Cigar Bill came out of committee, he spoke for it on the floor, and when it failed to come up in the Senate—because a lobbyist for the manufacturers stole the official copy—he resolved to carry the fight in the next term. He had by no means been converted to a union sympathizer, he was no “sentimentalist,” as he would say, but for possibly the first time in his life he had come face-to-face with certain extremely unpleasant realities that struck him as intolerable, a side of American life he had been unwilling to believe existed until seeing it with his own eyes.
Gompers would remember his “aggressiveness and evident sincerity.”
But the Cigar Bill, really everything he took a hand in that first session, was put in the shadows by his sudden call, on March 29, for the investigation and impeachment of a State Supreme Court judge, T. R. Westbrook, who, it appeared, was in league with the notorious Jay Gould.
The resolution was, as Hunt said, a bombshell. It was not that Theodore was exposing some awful new truth—Gould’s “association” with this particular judge had been dealt with in the papers, and in The New York Times in some detail—but that he, a very small fry in the legislature, was challenging not only the judiciary but the likes of Gould, who was understood to have more power than any man in the United States; Gould, who controlled something like ten percent of the country’s railroads; who now also controlled the Western Union Telegraph Company, and through it, the Associated Press; who owned the New York World, which published or withheld news however he wished; who had his own spies and agents and whose personal fortune was of a kind to make those of such “old money” aristocrats as the Roosevelts appear minuscule. (On a March day in 1882, when word began circulating that he was broke, Gould had called Russell Sage and one or two others into his office and spread before them on his desk a few of his securities—$23 million of Western Union stock, $12 million of Missouri Pacific Railroad, $19 million of “other stocks.”) Furthermore, few men had such a long-standing, proved reputation for largess in and about the corridors of the State House at Albany.
That the “best society”—Theodore’s constituency—scorned the whispery little Gould was no secret. He had been refused membership in the New York Yacht Club; he was never seen at Mrs. William Astor’s balls because he was never invited. It is even said James Alfred Roosevelt personally threw Gould out of his office on one occasion. Indeed, Gould was held contemptible by a great variety of decent people and was so despised by some whom he had destroyed along the way that he required plainclothes police protection day and night.
But scorn also had its limits, and while no gentleman could condone such shady dealings or ruthlessness of the kind Gould practiced, or accept him as a social equal, few prudent, ambitious men would ever openly attack him. Further, several of the city’s most important business people saw no reason not to join him in his ventures if it was to their advantage. They could make their peace with Gould in a purely business way readily enough and without apparent qualm. Having gained control of the Western Union Company the year before by the most blatant kind of piracy, Gould had had no trouble bringing in as board members such figures as John Jacob Astor and J. Pierpont Morgan. As head of his more recently acquired Manhattan Elevated Railway Company, the centerpiece of the Westbrook Scandal, Gould had installed Cyrus Field, who was famous as the promoter of the first Atlantic Cable and was one of New York’s most socially prominent “good citizens.”
Theodore had happened on the Westbrook affair through his friend Hunt. In conjunction with work he was doing on an investigative committee, Hunt had learned that certain lawyers, assigned by the courts as receivers for insolvent insurance companies, were taking exorbitant fees and with court approval. Hunt had gone down to New York to the county clerk’s office and searching through the files found that such fees not only amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that they had all been allowed by the same judge, T. R. Westbrook. When Hunt returned to Albany and recounted his findings to Theodore, the name rang a bell—The New York Times had earlier charged Westbrook with complicity in Gould’s sudden acquisition of the huge Manhattan Elevated—so Theodore now went to New York to talk to the city editor at the Times, Henry Loewenthal, and to ask to see what the Times had in its files. This turned out to be quite a lot. Theodore was at the newspaper’s offices much of the day and afterward invited Loewenthal back to 57th Street, where they talked until well after midnight.
In his book, The Naval War of 1812, Theodore had devoted a large part of his energies to refuting the recognized authority on the subject, an English author named William James, whom Theodore found to be much in error and attacked on point after point. Often, he seemed more intent on destroying James than in telling his story. But he did it by going to documentary sources, seeing for himself, and here the situation was the same. He was attacking a figure of established authority, but only after having done the necessary spadework.
In the picture that emerged, Westbrook was plainly Goulds pawn, even to the point of holding court in Gould’s private office at the Western Union Building. As Westbrook said himself in a letter to Gould—a letter the Times had somehow obtained but not published—he was “willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion” to protect Gould’s interests.
Recognizing the tremendous future in store for any rapid-transit system in New York, Gould had decided he needed the Manhattan Elevated. His scheme, as usual, was to harass and intimidate the existing owners at every opportunity, drive the stock down below its true value, then begin buying. He was joined in the venture by Russell Sage, possibly the shrewdest of all Wall Street freebooters, and all the while his editors at the World kept up a running attack on the owners of the Manhattan Elevated, implying they were corrupt, the company insolvent. But even more effective for Goulds purposes was his judge, Westbrook, who at the proper moment declared the company bankrupt and appointed two of Goulds people as receivers. The stock fell to a fraction of its previous value and once Gould had taken over a major share of the stock and the price suddenly rebounded, the judge as suddenly reversed himself, declaring the company miraculously solvent. He ordered that its affairs be removed from the hands of the receivers and entrusted to management, which appeared to be Cyrus Field but which in fact was Gould. In the World, the editors said they “never believed but that Manhattan would be rescued by men who have the brains and the means to make the most of it.”
In days gone by, when Gould had been starting out on his rise to power, his first lawyer was T. R. Westbrook.
Theodore had been warned to tread lightly and no sooner was his call for an investigation put before the Assembly than it was stalled through parliamentary maneuver (tabled for further discussion), the leadership on both sides manifestly wi
shing no part of it.
He was warned again, only now, too, by an old family friend, someone he never identified except as a “member of a prominent law firm.” Theodore was taken to lunch and was advised patiently that while it had been fine of him to make the “reform play,” he had done enough. It was time he left politics and identified himself with “the right kind of people,” those who in the long run “controlled others” and reaped rewards “worth having.” Theodore was appalled. Did this mean, he asked, that he must give in to the “ring”? It was naïve, said the friend, to imagine a mere political ring of the sort the newspapers pictured. The real “inner circle” was one of businessmen, judges, lawyers, and politicians all “in alliance,” and this was the point: the successful man had to win his success by the backing of these same forces, whatever his field.
Late the afternoon of April 5, the official day nearly over, “the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt” was up again calling, “Mr. Spee-kar! Mr. Spee-kar!” He wanted his resolution debated and voted on with no further delay. “No! No!” shouted “bad old fellow” Tom Alvord. But Theodore kept talking, “clearly and slowly,” for another ten minutes, his voice filling the huge chamber. He went through Westbrooks conduct step by step, attacking Gould by name, calling him a shark and a swindler whose dishonesty was a matter of common knowledge. The members sat in absolute silence, listening to every word. As the Times commented the next morning, for any public man to speak so, “calling men and things by their right names in these days of judicial, ecclesiastical, and journalistic subservience to the robber-barons,” required “some little courage.”
I am aware that it ought to have been done by a man of more experience, and, possibly, an abler source than myself, but as nobody else chose to demand it [the investigation], I certainly would in the interest of the Commonwealth of New York . . .
There was no applause when he finished, only the hum of great muffled excitement. Ten minutes remained until closing time at five, and had Theodore known how to bring the issue to vote right then, it might have carried. As it was, Tom Alvord very smoothly intervened. Alvord had been Speaker of the Assembly the year Theodore was born. He stood now in the aisle, leaning on his cane, recalling slowly how often in his career he had seen good men shattered by irresponsible, unsubstantiated charges. Possibly there should be an investigation, possibly he would support such an investigation, he said. But there need be no hurry—indeed, “the young man from New York” would be well advised to take a little time to reflect on the wisdom of his actions.
So the clock ran out, nothing was accomplished.
The issue could be ignored no longer, however. There had been an immediate response in the press to what Theodore had said and, except for the World, nearly all laudatory. With his first major speech he had made himself known throughout the state. Goulds representatives in Albany were also busier than usual. A special messenger from John Kelly, head of Tammany Hall, came on from New York at once by night train.
Theodore tried again the next morning and again he was outmaneuvered. He forgot to specify the kind of vote he wanted. The Speaker called for a standing vote and the whole body started bobbing up and down so rapidly nobody could keep count. The clerk’s tally, the only one that mattered, was 50 for, 54 against.
Another try in the afternoon fared better. Theodore waited for a lull, when many members had wandered away from their seats. “I demand ayes and nays,” he remembered to say this time, and though the count was still short of the two-thirds majority needed for such an investigation, there were now more members voting with him than against, and from then on his support gathered rapidly. Public indignation had been roused and as a consequence the change of heart among his colleagues was astonishing. On April 12, the Assembly voted the investigation by a margin of 104 to 6.
For most of what remained of the session, the matter was in the hands of the Judiciary Committee, and when the committee presented its report at the end of May, it was a whitewash. The judge was said to have done nothing for which he should be impeached. Apparently the committee had been “turned” by three bribes of $2,500 each, a reasonable sum, it was thought, for decisions of such large import.
Theodore was up on his feet once more, expressing himself as forcefully as he knew how. The effect, said Hunt, was “powerful, wonderful,” and to no avail. The vote sustained the committee report; the judge was not to be touched.
The pressures brought to bear on individual members had been enormous. Virtually the entire Democratic Party had lined up behind Westbrook, and the afternoon of the final vote the lobby was crawling with “prominent men from all over the state,” there to see exactly who voted which way. Ike Hunt had been called on by a fellow lawyer from his hometown and reminded of how once Westbrook had decided a case in his, Hunt’s, favor. “Now you don’t want to go to work and destroy a good judge like Judge Westbrook,” Hunt was told. Years afterward, Hunt would concede that Westbrook had been a respectably good man, until he “got in that thing and sharpers got him . . .” And Theodore, too, in retrospect, said he never knew if Westbrook was corrupt or not. “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 . . . 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.”
The Assembly disbanded two days later. The Westbrook Scandal faded into the background. Westbrook himself was later found dead in a hotel room in Troy, whether by suicide or natural causes remained a mystery. Gould and Russell Sage held on to the Manhattan Elevated, but disposed of Cyrus Field, leaving him financially ruined. The distinguished Field, unlike Gould or Sage, actually knew something about the elevated system and thought it should be run as an institution of public service. Gould had needed Field’s name and his money, and the trusting Field had foolishly concluded that Gould was his friend.
For Theodore, prospects had never looked so bright. It was said, by the Evening Post, that he had accomplished more good than any man of his age and experience had accomplished in years. (The Evening Post at the moment was being edited by Carl Schurz.) George William Curtis singled him out for national attention in Harper’s Weekly.
It is with the greatest satisfaction that those who are interested in good government see a young man in the Legislature who . . . does not know the meaning of fear, and to whom the bluster and bravado of party and political bullies are as absolutely indifferent as the blowing of the wind.
More important, no one in Albany could dismiss him as a lightweight any longer. Henceforth, as Hunt recalled, he was to be “considered a full-fledged man worthy of one’s esteem.” He had worked an almost miraculous change.
Running again the fall of 1882, he carried his district by better than two to one, and in the face of a victorious Democratic ticket headed by a reform candidate for governor, the mayor of Buffalo, Grover Cleveland. Back at Albany again, he was made the Republican nominee for Speaker, a somewhat empty honor in view of the overwhelming Democratic majority, but one which put him at the head of his party in the Assembly at the age of twenty-four. It was almost inconceivable prominence for one so young and inexperienced, let alone so unconventional. The papers began writing about the Cleveland Democrats and the Roosevelt Republicans. Theodore now was called to the governor’s office to confer on pending legislation. Remembering the two of them together, William Hudson of the Brooklyn Eagle would write, “The Governor would sit large, solid, and phlegmatic, listening gravely to the energetic utterances of the mercurial young man, but signifying neither assent nor dissent. Not infrequently taking silence for acquiescence, Roosevelt would go away thinking he had carried everything before him.”
“There is great sense in a lot of what he says,” Cleveland would remark of Theodore, “but there is such a cocksuredness about him that he stirs up doubt in me all the time. . . . Then he seems to b
e so very young.”
He was seldom out of sight, seldom still. “Such a super-abundance of animal life was hardly ever condensed in a human being,” said Hunt. If Theodore had a failing, in Hunt’s estimate, it was only that he wanted to set everything to rights instantly, and it was because of this that the second term was not what either of them anticipated. Success had gone to his head, Theodore later said, though the second term was hardly the disaster he felt it was, and in what it revealed about him as a human being, it was, if anything, more interesting than the first.
His sudden rise may be explained in part by other, earlier developments involving his father’s old enemy, Conkling. An unexpected dissolution of power had occurred just before Theodore ran for his first term and again the Customhouse was the issue. Early in 1881, the newly elected President, Garfield, had refused to follow Conkling’s dictates concerning the appointment of a Collector. In a fury Conkling resigned from the Senate, his friend and ally, New York’s other senator, Thomas C. Platt, going along with him. Both men had expected to be quickly vindicated and reinstated by a compliant legislature at Albany and thus to return to Washington stronger than ever. But it had not worked out as planned. Most people thought Conkling had made a fool of himself; the legislature turned on him and chose another in his place. Inconceivable as it seemed, the giant Conkling had come crashing down; his political career was ended. “I am done with politics forever,” he announced, and he meant it. He resumed the practice of law on Wall Street, his clients including Jay Gould. In Albany his minions were left “wandering around like wild geese without a gander.” Conceivably Tom Platt might have stepped in then, instead of later—Platt being a “great man for organization”—but Platt had been discovered in a compromising position with a young woman and was forced to retire from the scene in disgrace. Very possibly he had been framed. To quote Ike Hunt, “Jimmy Husted and some of them peeked over the transom and saw Tom one night in the hotel.”
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