Theodore Roosevelt and His Times | Page 7

went through without opposition. The complete
change of heart on the part of the black horsemen under the new
leadership was vastly significant. Nothing could be proved; but much
could be surmised.
Another incident of Roosevelt's legislative career reveals the bull-dog
tenacity of the man. Evidence had been procured that a State judge had
been guilty of improper, if not of corrupt, relations with certain
corporate interests. This judge had held court in a room of one of the
"big business" leaders of that time. He had written in a letter to this
financier, "I am willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to
serve your vast interests." There was strong evidence that he had not
stopped at the verge. The blood of the young Roosevelt boiled at the
thought of this stain on the judicial ermine. His party elders sought
patronizingly to reassure him; but he would have none of it. He rose in
the Assembly and demanded the impeachment of the unworthy judge.
With perfect candor and the naked vigor that in the years to come was
to become known the world around he said precisely what he meant.
Under the genial sardonic advice of the veteran Republican leader, who
"wished to give young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wisdom of
his course," the Assembly voted not to take up his "loose charges." It
looked like ignominious defeat. But the next day the young firebrand
was back to the attack again, and the next day, and the next. For eight
days he kept up the fight; each day the reputation of this contest for a
forlorn hope grew and spread throughout the State. On the eighth day
he demanded that the resolution be voted on again, and the opposition
collapsed. Only six votes were cast against his motion. It is true that the

investigation ended in a coat of whitewash. But the evidence was so
strong that no one could be in doubt that it WAS whitewash. The young
legislator, whose party mentors had seen before him nothing but a
ruined career, had won a smashing moral victory.
Roosevelt was not only a fighter from his first day in public life to the
last, but he was a fighter always against the same evils. Two incidents
more than a quarter of a century apart illustrate this fact. A bill was
introduced in the Assembly in those earlier days to prohibit the
manufacture of cigars in tenement houses in New York City. It was
proposed by the Cigar-Makers' Union. Roosevelt was appointed one of
a committee of three to investigate the subject. Of the other two
members, one did not believe in the bill but confessed privately that he
must support it because the labor unions were strong in his district. The
other, with equal frankness, confessed that he had to oppose the bill
because certain interests who had a strong hold upon him disapproved
it, but declared his belief that if Roosevelt would look into the matter
he would find that the proposed legislation was good. Politics, and
politicians, were like that in those days--as perhaps they still are in
these. The young aristocrat, who was fast becoming a stalwart and
aggressive democrat, expected to find himself against the bill; for, as he
has said, the "respectable people" and the "business men" whom he
knew did not believe in such intrusions upon the right even of
workingmen to do what they would with their own. The laissez faire
doctrine of economic life was good form in those days.
But the only member of that committee that approached the question
with an open mind found that his first impressions were wrong. He
went down into the tenement houses to see for himself. He found cigars
being made under conditions that were appalling. For example, he
discovered an apartment of one room in which three men, two women,
and several children--the members of two families and a male
boarder--ate, slept, lived, and made cigars. "The tobacco was stowed
about everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where
there were scraps of food." These conditions were not exceptional; they
were only a little worse than was usual.
Roosevelt did not oppose the bill; he fought for it and it passed. Then
he appeared before Governor Cleveland to argue for it on behalf of the
Cigar-Makers' Union. The Governor hesitated, but finally signed it. The

Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional, in a smug and well-fed
decision, which spoke unctuously of the "hallowed" influences of the
"home." It was a wicked decision, because it was purely academic, and
was removed as far as the fixed stars from the actual facts of life. But it
had one good result. It began the making of Theodore Roosevelt into a