The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  SEWALL AND DOW were not ready to move their wives, babies, and baggage out of the ranch before 9 October. By then their impatient boss had already departed for the East. It was left to Sewall to close up the great log cabin and slam the door on what even he, in later life, would recall as “the happiest time that any of us have ever known.”97

  And so silence returned to the Elkhorn bottom, broken only by the worried chomping of beavers down by the river.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Next Mayor of New York

  It is accepted,

  The angry defiance,

  The challenge of battle!

  THE MORNING OF 15 October 1886 was drizzly, and the East River heaved dull and gray as Roosevelt’s ferry pushed out from Brooklyn. On Bedloe’s Island, far across the Bay, he could mistily make out the silhouette that had been tantalizing New Yorkers for months: an enormous, headless Grecian torso, with half an arm reaching heavenward.1 But he probably gave it no more than a glance. His mind was on politics, and on this evening’s Republican County Convention in the Grand Opera House. He was curious to see who would be nominated for Mayor of New York. The forthcoming campaign promised to be unusually interesting—so much so he had delayed his departure to England until 6 November, four days after the election.

  For the first time in the city’s history, a Labor party had been organized to fight the two political parties. What was more, it had nominated as its candidate the most powerful radical in America. Roosevelt had met Henry George before—on 28 May 1883, the same night he first met Commander Gorringe2—and the little man had hardly seemed formidable. Balding, red-bearded, and runtlike, he was just the sort of “emasculated professional humanitarian” Roosevelt despised.3 Yet George was famous as the author of Progress and Poverty (1879), one of those rare political documents which translate sophisticated social problems into language comprehensible to the ghetto. So simple was the book’s language, so inspirational its philosophy to the poor, that millions of copies had been sold all over the world.4

  “A pale young Englishman … with a combination of courtliness and inquisitiveness.”

  Cecil Arthur Spring Rice at thirty-five. (Illustration 14.1)

  Henry George argued that because it takes many poor men to make one rich man, progress in fact creates poverty. The only way to solve this, “the great enigma of our times,” was to have a single tax on land, as the most ubiquitous form of wealth. Thus, the more a landlord speculated on Property, the more he would enrich Government, and the more Government would repay Labor, which had produced the wealth in the first place.5

  Up until 1886, George had been content to propound his single-tax philosophy in print and on lecture platforms (for all his lack of glamour, he was a blunt and effective orator). But the recent rash of angry strikes across the country6 persuaded him that it was time to submit his principles to the ballot. New York, with its abnormally wide gulf between rich and poor, was the obvious place to start. George let it be known that if thirty thousand workingmen pledged to support him for Mayor, he would run on an independent Labor ticket. Thirty-four thousand pledges flowed in, to the amazement of politicians all over the country. “I see in the gathering enthusiasm [of labor] a power that is stronger than money,” George crowed delightedly in his acceptance speech, “something that will smash the political organizations and scatter them like chaff before the wind.”7

  That had been on 5 October, and both Republicans and Democrats had scoffed at the little man’s hyperbole. Pledges of support bore, they knew, but fickle relation to actual voting figures: the most George could hope for was fifteen thousand. But now, only ten days later, George’s strength was increasing at a truly phenomenal rate. Professional politicians were seriously alarmed. If George, by some political fluke, captured City Hall, he would wield greater power than any former Mayor—thanks to legislation sponsored in 1884 by none other than Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt.8

  The latter’s first question, when he stepped off the ferry into a group of New York reporters, was about their latest estimate of George’s voting strength. The answer, “20,000, and probably much more,” surprised and flurried him. After remarking, irrelevantly, that he himself was “not a candidate” for Mayor (not even the most imaginative journalist thought that he might be), Roosevelt hurried uptown to the Union League Club.9

  DOUBTLESS HE INTENDED to attend the Republican County Convention as an observer. But during the afternoon he was visited by a group of influential Republicans, who, on behalf of party bosses, asked if he would accept the nomination for Mayor. This bombshell took him completely by surprise.10 As a loyal party man, he could not refuse the honor; as a loyal (and still secret) fiancé, he could not reveal that he had a transatlantic steamship ticket in his pocket. Edith was looking forward to a leisurely, three-month honeymoon in Europe after their wedding, and would surely resent being hurried back to New York so that he could prepare to take office on 1 January. Moreover she was hardly the type to spend the next two years shaking ill-manicured hands at municipal receptions. All this was assuming he won, of course. If he lost…

  But the party bosses were expecting an answer. Roosevelt agreed, “with the most genuine reluctance,” to allow his name to be put before the convention.11 The emissaries departed, leaving him alone. Night came on. He remained ensconced in his club, waiting for the inevitable news from the Opera House.

  HE HAD A LOT to think about during those solitary hours. Why had Johnny O’Brien, Jake Hess, Barney Biglin, and all the rest of the machine men offered him this unexpected honor? He was, after all, their ancient enemy. Perhaps they wished to reward him for his support of James G. Blaine in 1884; more likely they hoped he would lure the Independents back into the Republican fold, in order to have a united party behind Blaine—again—in 1888. Or perhaps they imagined (as many did) that he was a millionaire, and might contribute a liberal assessment to the campaign chest.12 They would soon learn the likelihood of that: half his capital was tied up in Dakota, and the interest on the remainder would barely support him and Edith at Sagamore Hill.13

  A cynical hypothesis which he did not want to consider, but which would come up in the press, was that the party bosses had decided no Republican could win a three-way contest for the mayoralty, and merely wanted a few thousand votes to trade on Election Day.14 Certainly the campaign odds were against him. The Democrats had just nominated Representative Abram S. Hewitt, a man of mature years, vast wealth, moderate opinions, and impeccable breeding.15 Hewitt also happened to be an industrialist, famous for his enlightened attitude to labor (during the depression years 1873–78 he ran his steel works at a loss in order to safeguard the jobs of his employees).16 He would doubtless attract all but the most extreme George followers, along with those Republicans who felt nervous about Roosevelt’s youth. Only yesterday, the Nation had editorialized: “Mr. Hewitt is just the kind of man New York should always have for Mayor,” and Roosevelt’s instinct told him the voters would agree on 2 November.17

  All in all, he concluded, it was “a perfectly hopeless contest, the chance of success being so very small that it may be left out of account … I have over forty thousand majority against me.” However, there was that chance; he had taken on older men before, and beaten them: his pugnacious soul rejoiced at the overwhelming challenge. He would make “a rattling good canvass” for the mayoralty, and would not be disgraced if he ran second. The only disaster would be to run third. But that seemed unlikely: in his opinion Henry George was “mainly wind.”18

  SEVEN BLOCKS AWAY, in the bakingly hot, tobacco-blue auditorium of the Grand Opera House, Chauncey Depew, the Republican party’s most unctuous orator, was persuading delegates that the idea of a young mayor for this, “the third city of the world,” was a brilliant one. “Every Republican here tonight asks for young blood. I would select a young man whose family has long been identified with good government… [cheers and shouts for Roosevelt] … He came out of the Legislature with a reputation as wide as the confin
es of this nation itself.” A senior Republican leaped up to protest that the young man was a Free Trader.19 “If in his experience he has made a mistake,” grinned Depew, “he has had the courage to acknowledge it.” The protester was booed and hissed out of the hall, and the convention unanimously nominated Theodore Roosevelt for Mayor.20

  RIGHT FROM THE START the candidate made it clear that he was going to run his own campaign. Establishing himself in luxurious headquarters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he informed the party bosses that he would pay “no assessment whatsoever” and would be “an adjunct to nobody.”21 These declarations aroused flattering comments in the press. “Mr. Roosevelt is a wonderful young man,” remarked the Democratic Sun. Even E. L. Godkin of the Post admitted: “If Roosevelt is elected, we have not a word to say against him.”22

  Roosevelt remained sure that he could not win at least through the first four days of the campaign. He explained to Lodge that he was only running “on the score of absolute duty,” and hoped to enjoy, if nothing else, “a better party standing” afterward. “The George vote will be very large … undoubtedly thousands of my should-be supporters will leave me and vote for Hewitt to beat him.”23 But this did not prevent him from campaigning with all his strength. He worked eighteen-hour days, addressing three to five meetings a night, pumping hands, signing circulars, repudiating bribes, plotting strategy, and on at least one occasion dictating letters and holding a press conference simultaneously.24

  As usual Roosevelt never minced words. He was determined to meet every issue head-on, even the touchy one of Labor v. Capital. George was so articulate on the left, and Hewitt so persuasive in the center, that Roosevelt might have been well advised to keep his own right-wing views tacit, and concentrate on other subjects; but that was not his style. When a Labor party official accused him of belonging to “the employing and landlord class, whose interests are best served when wages are low and rents are high,”25 Roosevelt shot back with a contemptuous public letter, dated 22 October 1886.

  “The mass of the American people,” he wrote, “are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak.” As for the accusation that he, Roosevelt, belonged to the landlord class, “if you had any conception of the true American spirit you would know that we do not have ‘classes’ at all on this side of the water.” In any case, “I own no land at all except that on which I myself live. Your statement that I wish rents to be high and wages low is a deliberate untruth … I have worked with both hands and with head, probably quite as hard as any member of your body. The only place where I employ many wage-workers is on my ranch in the West, and there almost every one of the men has some interest in the profits.”

  Roosevelt conceded that “some of the evils of which you complain are real and can be to a certain degree remedied, but not by the remedies you propose.” But most would disappear if there were more of “that capacity for steady, individual self-help which is the glory of every true American.” Legislation could no more do away with them “than you could do away with the bruises which you receive when you tumble down, by passing an act to repeal the laws of gravitation.”26

  To this the Labor man could only reply, “If you were compelled to live on $1 a day, Mr. Roosevelt, would you not also complain of being in a deplorable condition?”27 But by then Roosevelt’s campaign was going so well—to everybody’s surprise—that the mournful question was ignored.

  ON THE NIGHT of Wednesday, 27 October, Roosevelt’s twenty-eighth birthday, bonfires belched in the street outside Cooper Union, reddening the huge building’s facade until it glowed like a beacon. For almost an hour, rockets soared into the murky sky, casting showers of light over Lower Manhattan and attracting thousands of curious sightseers. By 7:30 P.M. every seat in the hall was filled, and standing room was at a premium as Republican citizens of New York gathered to ratify the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for Mayor. One old politician marveled that he had never seen such a crowd since Lincoln spoke at the Union in 1860.28

  The guest of honor did not appear until shortly before eight o’clock. He had long ago learned the dramatic effect of delayed entry. In the meantime the audience could feast their eyes on his large crayon portrait, surrounded by American flags and a gilt eagle, and hung around with rich silk banners. It was, as one reporter observed, “a millionaires’ meeting.” Astors, Choates, Whitneys, Peabodys, and Rockefellers fondled each other’s lapels, and discussed “the boy Roosevelt’s” remarkable progress in the campaign so far.29 They had been impressed to read, in various daily papers, such headlines as the following:

  (22 Oct.) PIPING HOT—Roosevelt Busy as a Beaver

  (23 Oct.) RED HOT POLITICS—The Fight Going on Merrily All Over the City

  (24 Oct.) THE ROOSEVELT TIDAL WAVE—Growing Strength of the Candidate

  (25 Oct.) ROOSEVELT STILL LEADING

  (26 Oct.) CHEERS FOR ROOSEVELT, THE BOY

  (27 Oct.) ALL SOLID FOR ROOSEVELT30

  Not only Republicans were impressed by him. Abram Hewitt himself admitted he would have liked Roosevelt on his team, as president of the Board of Aldermen.31 The editors of the Sun—Democrats to a man—had been moved to print these prophetic words on the eve of the Cooper Union meeting:

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT has gone into the fight for the Mayoralty with his accustomed heartiness. Fighting is fun for him, win or lose, and perhaps this characteristic of his makes him as many friends as anything else. He makes a lot of enemies too, but so does anybody who is fit to live … He is getting to be somewhat a shrewder politician … and though he is somewhat handicapped by the officious support of the Union League Club, he may do well. It cannot be denied that his candidacy is attractive in many respects, and he is liable to get votes from many sources. He has a good deal at stake, and it’s no wonder that he is working with all the strength of his blizzard-seasoned constitution. It is not merely the chance of being elected Mayor that interests him. There are other offices he might prefer. To be in his youth the candidate for the first office in the first city of the U.S., and to poll a good vote for that office, is something more than empty honor.… He cannot be Mayor this year, but who knows what may happen in some other year? Congressman, Governor, Senator, President?32

  “BLUSHING LIKE a schoolgirl,” Roosevelt bounces onstage to brass fanfares and a standing ovation.33 Somebody shouts, “Three cheers for the next Mayor of New York!” and the auditorium vibrates with noise. It is some minutes before Elihu Root, chairman of the Republican County Committee and the only calm man in the room (with his slit eyes, bangs, and waxlike cheeks, he resembles a Chinese mandarin), introduces Thomas C. Acton as chairman of the meeting. The silver-haired banker steps forward.

  “You are called here tonight to ratify the nomination of the youngest man who ever ran as candidate for the Mayor of New York,” says Acton. “I knew his father, and wish to tell you that his father did a great deal for the Republican party, and the son will do more … [Applause] He is young, he is vigorous, he is a natural reformer. He is full, not of the law, but of the spirit of the law …” The chairman begins to flounder, then hits upon a crowd-pleasing phrase. “The Cowboy of Dakota!” he cries. “Make the Cowboy of Dakota the next Mayor!”

  This brings about a roar so prolonged that the band has to strike up “Marching Through Georgia” to quell it. Roosevelt, showing all of his teeth, approaches the lectern.

  His speech is typically short, blunt, and witty. He begins by noting that Abram Hewitt has predicted “every honest and respectable voter” will support the Democrats. “I think,” says Roosevelt, “that on Election Day Mr. Hewitt will find that the criminal classes have polled a very big vote.” When the laughter from that dies down, he goes on to counter the outgoing Mayor’s charge that he is “too radical” a reformer. “The time for radical reform has arrived,” he shouts, “and if I am elected you will have it.”

  A VOICE You will be elected.

  ROOSEVELT I think so, myself! (Great applause.)

  He cas
tigates his habitual targets, “the dull, the feeble, and the timid good,” and proclaims himself a strong man, careless of class, color, or party politics. “If I find a public servant who is dishonest, I will chop his head off if he is the highest Republican in this municipality!”34

  An effective follow-up speech is made by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Century magazine. He confesses that he has never stood on a political platform before, but is doing so now in order to praise “the best municipal nomination that has been made in my time … Mr. Roosevelt is, in my opinion, the pluckiest, the bravest man inside of politics in the whole country.”35 Amid thunderous applause, the nomination is declared ratified.

  The candidate shakes hands for twenty minutes until aides drag him from the platform. Outside, in the rain, a large crowd is waiting to serenade him. “I hope to see you all down in the City Hall after January 1, when I am Mayor,” says Roosevelt. He bows and he smiles.36

  AN EXTRAORDINARY HUSH descended on the city’s political headquarters next day, 28 October. Everybody except Roosevelt, it seemed, was aboard sight-seeing boats in the Bay, or fighting for a foothold on Bedloe’s Island, where, that afternoon, President Cleveland was due to unveil the great Statue of Liberty.37 Roosevelt, therefore, had a few hours alone at his desk, undisturbed except by a distant thumping of drums, to ponder press reports of his birthday rally, and review his chances for the mayoralty.

  While the reports were generally flattering, there was no change in the partisan attitudes of any newspaper. The Times, Tribune, Commercial Advertiser, and Mail & Express were for him; the Herald, Sun, World, and Daily News were for Hewitt. Only a few smudgy ethnic sheets were for George. The balance, in other words, was fairly even: while Hewitt’s newspapers had more readers, Roosevelt’s reached more influential people. With his popular momentum increasing, and only five days left to go, it was tempting to believe the Times’s headline: “ROOSEVELT SURE TO WIN—THAT’S WHAT LAST NIGHT’S MEETING INDICATES.” The Tribune carried even more encouraging news, under the headline, “MR. ROOSEVELT’S PROSPECTS—HIS ELECTION NOW DEEMED CERTAIN.” It reported that the U.S. Chief Supervisor of Elections, after making an independent survey, projected a total vote of 85,850 for Roosevelt, 75,000 for Hewitt, and 60,000 for George.38