• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2983 0

outcome. The Roosevelt circle as a whole had a profound distrust of public life.”36 So, too, did his father’s friends—bankers, lawyers, businessmen, clubmen. Politics, they assured him from the depths of their leather armchairs, was “low.” A gentleman of his upbringing might subscribe to campaign funds—without inquiring too closely as to how the money was spent—might even attend a primary or two, and of course he had a duty to cast his vote on Election Day, providing the weather was fine. But to traffic with men who were “rough and brutal and unpleasant” was decidedly infra dig. He should not soil his kid gloves on the levers of political machinery.37

Theodore reacted with predictable anger:

I answered that if this were so it merely meant that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that the other people did—and that I intended to be one of the governing class; and if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble.38

He could, of course, have entered the government the respectable way—by cultivating the society of men in leather armchairs, qualifying as a lawyer himself, and, in ten years or so, running for a seat in the United States Senate. But some instinct told him that if he desired raw political power—and from this winter on, for the rest of his life, he never ceased to desire it—he must start on the shop floor, learn to work those greasy levers one by one.39 Besides, he had a private score to settle. It had been the New York State Republican machine, still controlled by Boss Roscoe Conkling, that had destroyed Theodore Senior; might not Theodore Junior, by mastering its techniques, use that same machine to avenge him? Among his father’s letters, which he kept about him as “talismans against evil,”40 was one dated 16 December 1877, after Conkling’s victory in the Senate. In the tired hand of a dying man, Theodore Senior had written: “The ‘Machine politicians’ have shown their colors … I feel sorry for the country however as it shows the power of partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests, and I feel for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.”41

So the budding socialite turned his back on privilege, and spent more and more time at Morton Hall.42 Despite the glory he later attained, the clubby set never quite forgave him. He was considered “a traitor to his caste,” a man who “should have been on the side of capital.”43 Long after his death, when builders began to convert the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace into a national shrine, a family elder exclaimed, “I don’t know why you are making such a fuss. I used to hate to see him coming down the street.”44

THE STOUT MAN WHO chaired meetings at Morton Hall, from behind a stout pitcher of iced water, was scarcely more pleased to hear Theodore’s feet drumming up the stairs. “Jake” Hess was a self-made, professional politician, and had little use for amateurs in evening clothes.45 His German-Jewish heritage had not prevented him from elbowing aside many Irish Catholic challengers to win control of the Twenty-first District. A loyal servant of the upstate Republican machine, Hess regularly supplied Albany with loyal, machine-minded Assemblymen. Since the Twenty-first was one of the few “safe” Republican districts in New York City, he was a man of unusual influence, and pompously aware of it.46

At first Theodore tried to cultivate Hess, but his efforts were received only with “rather distant affability.” The newcomer was forced to mingle instead with the rank and file of the party—and some were rank indeed—acquiring “the political habit” at the very lowest level. For most of the winter of 1880–81 he seemed content with this society.

I went around there often enough to have the men get accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began to speak the same language, and so that each could begin to