The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (35 page)

The effect of this speech, according to Isaac Hunt, was “powerful, wonderful.”
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Such direct language, such courageous naming of names, had not been heard in Albany for decades. What was more, Roosevelt’s accusations were obviously based on solid research. If a vote had been held then, according to one correspondent, the resolution would have been approved. But Tom Alvord was already on his feet, displaying remarkable agility for a man of seventy years. With gnarled hands knotted on a cane, and his head swaying from side to side, the ex-Speaker suggested that “the young man from New York” needed time to reflect and reconsider. How many bright legislative careers had been ruined, in this very chamber, by just such irresponsible allegations as these! Why, he himself, when young and
foolish, had been tempted to do the same. Fortunately, he had refrained. Public reputations were “too precious” to be lightly assailed … 
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The grandfatherly voice droned on, while the minute hand of the clock crept inexorably toward twelve. At five minutes before the hour Roosevelt asked if the gentleman would “give way for a motion to extend the time.”

Alvord’s reaction was savage. “No,” he shouted, “I will not give way! I want this thing over and to give the members time to consider it!”
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He continued to maunder on; the clock chimed; the gavel dropped; Roosevelt’s resolution returned to the table. Alvord limped out in triumph. “That dude,” he snorted. “The damn fool, he would tread on his own balls just as quick as he would on his neighbor’s.”
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T
HAT EVENING THE CAVERNS
of the Delavan House hummed with discussion of Roosevelt’s speech, while reporters dashed off the news for front-page headlines in the Thursday papers. “Mr. Roosevelt’s charges,” wrote the
Sun
correspondent, “were made with a boldness that was almost startling.” George Spinney of
The New York Times
complimented him on his “most refreshing habit of calling men and things by their right names,” and predicted “a splendid career” for the young reformer. The
World
correspondent, representing the publishing interests of Jay Gould, was dismissive. “The son of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt ought to have learned, even at this early period of his life, the difference between a call for a legislative committee of investigation and a stump speech.”
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Overnight, both Republican and Democratic machines whirred into silent, efficient action. A secret messenger from Tammany Hall came flying up on the late train, groups of veteran members worked out a strategy to block the “obnoxious resolution,” and Gould’s representatives in Albany began to lobby behind closed doors.
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Next morning, Thursday, Roosevelt called for a vote to lift his resolution from the table. Again, he was outwitted on the floor. The Speaker took advantage of the fact that he had forgotten to say what kind of vote he wanted, and called for members to stand up
and be counted. A sea of anonymous heads bobbed quickly up and down. The deputy clerk pretended to count them, recorded a couple of imaginary figures, and the Speaker announced the result: 54 to 50 against.

“By Godfrey!” Roosevelt seethed. “I’ll get them on the record yet!”
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He waited until much later in the day, when the House was drowsing over unimportant business. This time he demanded a name vote. Forced to identify themselves, the members voted 59 to 45 in favor of considering the resolution.
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Roosevelt was still short of the two-thirds majority he needed to launch an investigation of Westbrook and Ward, but time, and public opinion, was on his side. Tomorrow, Good Friday, was the beginning of the Easter recess. During the long weekend, newspapers would continue to discuss his “bombshell” resolution, and by the time the Assembly reconvened on Monday evening, members would have heard from their constituents.

T
HE FORCES OF CORRUPTION
, meanwhile, were very anxious that Roosevelt’s constituents—the wealthiest and most respectable in the state—should hear something about
him
. Since the young man was maddeningly immune to coercion and bribery,
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they tried to blackmail him with sex. Walking home to 6 West Fifty-seventh Street one night, he was startled to see a woman slip and fall on the sidewalk in front of him. He summoned a cab, whereupon she tearfully begged him to accompany her home; but he grew suspicious, and refused. As he paid the cabdriver, he took note of the address she gave, and immediately afterward dispatched a police detective to her house. The report came back that there had been “a whole lot of men waiting to spring on him.”
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T
HAT
E
ASTER WEEKEND
, which saw admiring articles on Roosevelt’s Westbrook Resolution appear in newspapers from Montauk to Buffalo, was sufficient to make his name a household word across New York State. At a time of growing disenchantment
with the Republican Party (now widely believed to be controlled by men like Jay Gould), he leaped into the headlines, passionate and incorruptible, a defender of the people against the unholy alliance of politics, big business, and the bench. Particularly adoring were wealthy young liberals, such as his former classmates at Harvard and Columbia. “We hailed him as the dawn of a new era,” wrote Poultney Bigelow, “the man of good family once more in the political arena; the college-bred tribune superior to the temptations which beset meaner men. ‘Teddy,’ as we called him, was our ideal.”
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B
Y 12
A
PRIL
, when Roosevelt again moved to lift his resolution from the table, public demand for an investigation of Westbrook and Ward was such that the Assembly voted 104 to 6 in its favor. Prominent among the holdouts were J. J. Costello and old Tom Alvord, the latter predicting darkly that certain “gentlemen who had gone after wool would come back shorn.”
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But Roosevelt, whatever the outcome of the investigation, had already scored a major political triumph. As the Judiciary Committee hearings got under way, his personality visibly expanded. The crudely fermenting energy of his early days in Albany sweetened into a bubbling
joie de vivre
that vented itself in exuberant slammings of doors, gallopings up stairs, and shouts of laughter audible, George Spinney guessed, at least four miles away.
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His hunger for knowledge on all subjects grew to the point that after every Rooseveltian breakfast, hotel waiters had to clear away piles of ravaged newspapers. A reporter who sat nearby recalled that he read these newspapers “at a speed that would have excited the jealousy of the most rapid exchange editor.” Roosevelt “saw everything, grasped the sense of everything, and formed an opinion on everything which he was eager to maintain at any risk.”
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Like a child, said Isaac Hunt, the young Assemblyman took on new strength and new ideas. “He would leave Albany Friday afternoon, and he would come back Monday night, and you could
see
changes that had happened to him. Such a superabundance of animal life was hardly ever condensed in a human [being].”
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This new vitality warmed everybody who came in contact with Roosevelt—in particular members of his immediate family. It warmed Alice, lonely in their Albany apartment during the long Assembly sessions; it warmed widowed Mittie and the spinsterish Bamie, coexisting irritably amidst the splendors of 6 West Fifty-seventh Street; it warmed plump, weepy Corinne, as he gave her away in marriage to Douglas Robinson, a man who left her cold;
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it even warmed Elliott, just returned from India, drinking heavily, and still undecided about his future. All huddled close to the glowing youth in their midst, while Theodore himself reveled in “the excitement and perpetual conflict” of politics, the feeling that he was “really being of some use in the world.”
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W
HAT “USE” HE WAS
in Albany became a matter of some debate as the months went by. Not for nothing was he known as “the Cyclone Assemblyman,”
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being primarily a destructive force in the House. Indeed, Roosevelt seemed better at scattering the legislation of other men than whipping up any of his own. Although he continued to talk loudly of “moral duty,” his scruples were usually economic. Halfway through the session the
Tribune
described him as “a watchdog over New York’s treasury.”
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Two months later, after the Aldermanic Bill finally achieved passage, the same newspaper remarked: “This is the only bill that Mr. Roosevelt has succeeded in passing through the Legislature; but as he has killed four score [other] … bills he is probably satisfied with his record.”
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Particularly surprising, in view of Roosevelt’s later renown as the most labor-minded of Presidents, was his attitude to social legislation. It was so harsh that even the loyal Hunt and O’Neil voted against him on occasion. For instance, he vigorously protested a proposal to fix the minimum wage for municipal laborers at $2.00 a day. “Why, Mr. Speaker, this bill will impose an expenditure of
thousands
of dollars upon the City of New York!”
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He also fought against raising the inadequate salaries of firemen and policemen. When somebody suggested that such people should at least have parity with civil service workers who got more and lived less
dangerously, his response was facetious. “Just because we cannot stop all the large leaks, that is no reason why we should open up all the little ones.” Only seven other members agreed with this argument, and the bill was passed overwhelmingly.
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