The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [365]
LOOKING BACK OVER the session in the first flush of his victory, Roosevelt felt some relief and no little pride in what he had accomplished as Governor.50 There had been, beside this recent spectacular achievement, a good deal of progressive legislation,51 which made up in historical significance what it lacked in contemporary drama. “I got an excellent Civil Service law passed,” he boasted, by way of example. This was true enough. The original law which he and Grover Cleveland had engineered in 1883 had been repealed in 1897, for no other reason apparently than to increase Republican spoilsmanship. Cooperating with his old friends at the Civil Service Reform Association, Roosevelt had succeeded in getting a stiff new bill through the Legislature, but only after “herculean labor,” and some spontaneous assistance from Senator Platt. The resultant Act was the most advanced for any state in the nation.52
Roosevelt also congratulated himself, justifiably, on his labor record.53 He had supported, fought for, and signed several bills aimed at improving the working conditions in tenement sweatshops; at strengthening state factory-inspection procedures; at limiting the maximum hours to be worked by employed women and children; and at imposing a stricter eight-hour day law upon the state work force, as an example to other large corporations.54 He consulted widely with union officials—far more than any of his predecessors—and greatly strengthened the state supervisory board to protect industrial workers from exploitation. Fortunately there had been no violent demonstrations to strain his good humor—yet.55
There had been one or two blots on Roosevelt’s record which time would darken, notably his decision in late February to send a woman to the electric chair for the first time in the history of New York State.56 This was in spite of the anguished pleas of humanitarians and warnings that the execution would destroy his Presidential chances.57 The Governor justified his decision by saying that the woman had been fairly convicted of murder, and that in any case sex had nothing to do with the law.58
Roosevelt’s only major inherited problem, the Erie Canal scandal, was for the time being dormant, thanks to his appointment of Superintendent Partridge and courageous selection of two Democrats to reinvestigate. Critics might complain that the delay was unnecessary, given last year’s proof of Republican malfeasance, but few observers doubted that the Governor would prosecute fearlessly if the evidence was upheld.59
“All together I am pretty well satisfied with what I have accomplished,” wrote Roosevelt. “I do not misunderstand in the least what it means—or rather, how little it may mean. New York politics are kaleidoscopic and 18 months hence I may be so much out of kilter with the machine that there may be no possibility of my renomination.…”60
Along with parochial, the adjective kaleidoscopic was increasingly a part of his vocabulary, as he contemplated the rapid shifts of fortune which had marked his recent career. The kaleidoscope continued to shift, ever more rapidly, in the days and months ahead, disclosing sometimes a dazzling perspective to infinity, sometimes dark visions of chaos.
Thus within a month of his boast to Lodge he was confessing to Bamie that he felt “a wee bit depressed”61—a Rooseveltian euphemism for submersion in the Slough of Despond. Having had time to reflect, he realized that his early reservations about the Ford Franchise Tax Bill, now lying on his desk for signature, had been well-founded. The local assessment clause was indeed an alarming problem. In New York City, for instance, it meant that Tammany Hall would have the power to tax all the traction companies—or demand vast bribes for leniency. No wonder his oldest