The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [364]
ON 12 APRIL HE WAS surprised to hear that the Senate had mysteriously passed the Ford Bill by a vote of 33 to 11.40 Whatever Platt’s motive in letting Republican members vote for it (perhaps he was making a gesture to placate tax reformers, while still intending to block the measure in the Assembly), Roosevelt now had an excuse to take a public stand. On 14 April he announced that the bill, however imperfect, was beneficial to the community; the Assembly should send it on to him at once for signing.41 To Platt he guilelessly explained that he had broken silence simply at the request of the Senate Majority Leader, who felt the reputation of the Republican party was at stake. Platt’s response was to employ dilatory tactics. The House Taxation Committee promptly pigeonholed the bill and nothing more was heard of it. Meanwhile a rival measure appeared on the floor and was subject to lengthy debate, obviously for purposes of delay.42
The end of the session, scheduled for 28 April, was fast approaching, and Roosevelt grew impatient. After four months in office he felt sure enough of his strength to challenge Platt directly. He made up his mind “that if I could get a show in the Legislature the bill would pass, because the people had become interested and the representatives would scarcely dare to vote the wrong way.”43 Accordingly he set to work on individual Assemblymen (a task in which he had acquired expertise during his own term as Minority Leader) and used his tame press corps to take daily polls of the increase of likely votes in the House. By noon on 27 April there was a reported majority of twelve in favor of the Ford Bill.44 All that remained now was to persuade Platt’s leaders to bring it out of committee.
As Governor, Roosevelt possessed one formidable weapon which he had hitherto refrained from using: the Special Emergency Message. Under the rules of the Legislature he could use such a ploy to take up any bill out of turn and force it onto the floor.45 At five o’clock, therefore, when pressure in behalf of the Ford Bill had built up to a maximum in the Assembly, Roosevelt dictated his message demanding its immediate passage.
Speaker S. Fred Nixon, who had received direct orders from Platt “not to pass,” simply tore the message up without reading it to the House. He then retired to an anteroom and suffered a nervous collapse.46
ROOSEVELT HEARD THE NEWS at seven o’clock next morning, the final day of the session. He reacted much as he had when the Mausers were heard at Las Guásimas. Whether he advanced or retreated now, his political life was in danger. Nixon’s rejection of his message, if allowed to go unchallenged, would mean fatal humiliation at the critical moment of his Governorship. What was left of his strength would waste away through the non-legislative months of 1899; when the session of 1900 opened he would be a dead duck, with little hope of renomination by a contemptuous Senator Platt. Meanwhile lobbyists for the big franchise-holders in New York City were warning him that if he sent another message he would “under no circumstances … ever again be nominated for any public office,” as “no corporation would subscribe” to any future Roosevelt campaign.47
Stepping through the barbed wire, the Governor fired off another, more peremptory message:
I learn that the emergency message which I sent last evening to the Assembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax Bill has not been read. I therefore send hereby another message upon the subject. I need not impress upon the Assembly the need of passing this bill at once. It has been passed by an overwhelming vote through the Senate.… It establishes the principle that hereafter corporations holding franchises from the public shall pay their just share of the public burden … It is one of the most important measures (I am tempted to say the most important measure) that has been before the Legislature this year. I cannot too strongly urge its immediate passage.48
This time he entrusted his personal