Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography Part 15

close a.s.sociation with them. The machine as such had no ideals at all, although many of the men composing it did have. On the other hand, the ideals of very many of the silk-stocking reformers did not relate to the questions of real and vital interest to our people; and, singularly enough, in international matters, these same silk-stockings were no more to be trusted than the average ignorant demagogue or shortsighted spoils politicians. I felt that these men would be broken reeds to which to trust in any vital contest for betterment of social and industrial conditions.

I had neither the training nor the capacity that would have enabled me to match Mr. Platt and his machine people on their own ground. Nor did I believe that the effort to build up a machine of my own under the then existing conditions would meet the needs of the situation so far as the people were concerned. I therefore made no effort to create a machine of my own, and consistently adopted the plan of going over the heads of the men holding public office and of the men in control of the organization, and appealing directly to the people behind them. The machine, for instance, had a more or less strong control over the great bulk of the members of the State Legislature; but in the last resort the people behind these legislators had a still greater control over them. I made up my mind that the only way I could beat the bosses whenever the need to do so arose (and unless there was such need I did not wish to try) was, not by attempting to manipulate the machinery, and not by trusting merely to the professional reformers, but by making my appeal as directly and as emphatically as I knew how to the ma.s.s of voters themselves, to the people, to the men who if waked up would be able to impose their will on their representatives. My success depended upon getting the people in the different districts to look at matters in my way, and getting them to take such an active interest in affairs as to enable them to exercise control over their representatives.

There were a few of the Senators and a.s.semblymen whom I could reach by seeing them personally and putting before them my arguments; but most of them were too much under the control of the machine for me to shake them loose unless they knew that the people were actively behind me. In making my appeal to the people as a whole I was dealing with an entirely different const.i.tuency from that which, especially in the big cities, liked to think of itself as the "better element," the particular exponent of reform and good citizens.h.i.+p. I was dealing with shrewd, hard-headed, kindly men and women, chiefly concerned with the absorbing work of earning their own living, and impatient of fads, who had grown to feel that the a.s.sociations with the word "reformer" were not much better than the a.s.sociations with the word "politician." I had to convince these men and women of my good faith, and, moreover, of my common sense and efficiency. They were most of them strong partisans, and an outrage had to be very real and very great to shake them even partially loose from their party affiliations. Moreover, they took little interest in any fight of mere personalities. They were not influenced in the least by the silk-stocking reform view of Mr. Platt.

I knew that if they were persuaded that I was engaged in a mere faction fight against him, that it was a mere issue between his ambition and mine, they would at once become indifferent, and my fight would be lost.

But I felt that I could count on their support wherever I could show them that the fight was not made just for the sake of the row, that it was not made merely as a factional contest against Senator Platt and the organization, but was waged from a sense of duty for real and tangible causes such as the promotion of governmental efficiency and honesty, and forcing powerful moneyed men to take the proper att.i.tude toward the community at large. They stood by me when I insisted upon having the ca.n.a.l department, the insurance department, and the various departments of the State Government run with efficiency and honesty; they stood by me when I insisted upon making wealthy men who owned franchises pay the State what they properly ought to pay; they stood by me when, in connection with the strikes on the Croton Aqueduct and in Buffalo, I promptly used the military power of the State to put a stop to rioting and violence.

In the latter case my chief opponents and critics were local politicians who were truckling to the labor vote; but in all cases coming under the first two categories I had serious trouble with the State leaders of the machine. I always did my best, in good faith, to get Mr. Platt and the other heads of the machine to accept my views, and to convince them, by repeated private conversations, that I was right. I never wantonly antagonized or humiliated them. I did not wish to humiliate them or to seem victorious over them; what I wished was to secure the things that I thought it essential to the men and women of the State to secure. If I could finally persuade them to support me, well and good; in such case I continued to work with them in the friendliest manner.

If after repeated and persistent effort I failed to get them to support me, then I made a fair fight in the open, and in a majority of cases I carried my point and succeeded in getting through the legislation which I wished. In theory the Executive has nothing to do with legislation. In practice, as things now are, the Executive is or ought to be peculiarly representative of the people as a whole. As often as not the action of the Executive offers the only means by which the people can get the legislation they demand and ought to have. Therefore a good executive under the present conditions of American political life must take a very active interest in getting the right kind of legislation, in addition to performing his executive duties with an eye single to the public welfare. More than half of my work as Governor was in the direction of getting needed and important legislation. I accomplished this only by arousing the people, and riveting their attention on what was done.

Gradually the people began to wake up more and more to the fact that the machine politicians were not giving them the kind of government which they wished. As this waking up grew more general, not merely in New York or any other one State, but throughout most of the Nation, the power of the bosses waned. Then a curious thing happened. The professional reformers who had most loudly criticized these bosses began to change toward them. Newspaper editors, college presidents, corporation lawyers, and big business men, all alike, had denounced the bosses and had taken part in reform movements against them so long as these reforms dealt only with things that were superficial, or with fundamental things that did not affect themselves and their a.s.sociates. But the majority of these men turned to the support of the bosses when the great new movement began clearly to make itself evident as one against privilege in business no less than against privilege in politics, as one for social and industrial no less than for political righteousness and fair dealing. The big corporation lawyer who had antagonized the boss in matters which he regarded as purely political stood shoulder to shoulder with the boss when the movement for betterment took shape in direct attack on the combination of business with politics and with the judiciary which has done so much to enthrone privilege in the economic world.

The reformers who denounced political corruption and fraud when shown at the expense of their own candidates by machine ward heelers of a low type hysterically applauded similar corrupt trickery when practiced by these same politicians against men with whose political and industrial programme the reformers were not in sympathy. I had always been instinctively and by nature a democrat, but if I had needed conversion to the democratic ideal here in America the stimulus would have been supplied by what I saw of the att.i.tude, not merely of the bulk of the men of greatest wealth, but of the bulk of the men who most prided themselves upon their education and culture, when we began in good faith to grapple with the wrong and injustice of our social and industrial system, and to hit at the men responsible for the wrong, no matter how high they stood in business or in politics, at the bar or on the bench.

It was while I was Governor, and especially in connection with the franchise tax legislation, that I first became thoroughly aware of the real causes of this att.i.tude among the men of great wealth and among the men who took their tone from the men of great wealth.

Very soon after my victory in the race for Governor I had one or two experiences with Senator Platt which showed in amusing fas.h.i.+on how absolute the rule of the boss was in the politics of that day. Senator Platt, who was always most kind and friendly in his personal relations with me, asked me in one day to talk over what was to be done at Albany.

He had the two or three nominal heads of the organization with him. They were his lieutenants, who counseled and influenced him, whose advice he often followed, but who, when he had finally made up his mind, merely registered and carried out his decrees. After a little conversation the Senator asked if I had any member of the a.s.sembly whom I wished to have put on any committee, explaining that the committees were being arranged. I answered no, and expressed my surprise at what he had said, because I had not understood the Speaker who appointed the committees had himself been agreed upon by the members-elect. "Oh!" responded the Senator, with a tolerant smile, "He has not been chosen yet, but of course whoever we choose as Speaker will agree beforehand to make the appointments we wish." I made a mental note to the effect that if they attempted the same process with the Governor-elect they would find themselves mistaken.

In a few days the opportunity to prove this arrived. Under the preceding Administration there had been grave scandals about the Erie Ca.n.a.l, the trans-State Ca.n.a.l, and these scandals had been one of the chief issues in the campaign for the Governors.h.i.+p. The construction of this work was under the control of the Superintendent of Public Works. In the actual state of affairs his office was by far the most important office under me, and I intended to appoint to it some man of high character and capacity who could be trusted to do the work not merely honestly and efficiently, but without regard to politics. A week or so after the Speakers.h.i.+p incident Senator Platt asked me to come and see him (he was an old and physically feeble man, able to move about only with extreme difficulty).

On arrival I found the Lieutenant-Governor elect, Mr. Woodruff, who had also been asked to come. The Senator informed me that he was glad to say that I would have a most admirable man as Superintendent of Public Works, as he had just received a telegram from a certain gentleman, whom he named, saying that he would accept the position! He handed me the telegram. The man in question was a man I liked; later I appointed him to an important office in which he did well. But he came from a city along the line of the ca.n.a.l, so that I did not think it best that he should be appointed anyhow; and, moreover, what was far more important, it was necessary to have it understood at the very outset that the Administration was my Administration and was no one else's but mine. So I told the Senator very politely that I was sorry, but that I could not appoint his man. This produced an explosion, but I declined to lose my temper, merely repeating that I must decline to accept any man chosen for me, and that I must choose the man myself. Although I was very polite, I was also very firm, and Mr. Platt and his friends finally abandoned their position.

I appointed an engineer from Brooklyn, a veteran of the Civil War, Colonel Partridge, who had served in Mayor Low's administration. He was an excellent man in every way. He chose as his a.s.sistant, actively to superintend the work, a Cornell graduate named Elon Hooker, a man with no political backing at all, picked simply because he was the best equipped man for the place. The office, the most important office under me, was run in admirable fas.h.i.+on throughout my Administration; I doubt if there ever was an important department of the New York State Government run with a higher standard of efficiency and integrity.

But this was not all that had to be done about the ca.n.a.ls. Evidently the whole policy hitherto pursued had been foolish and inadequate. I appointed a first-cla.s.s non-partisan commission of business men and expert engineers who went into the matter exhaustively, and their report served as the basis upon which our entire present ca.n.a.l system is based.

There remained the question of determining whether the ca.n.a.l officials who were in office before I became Governor, and whom I had declined to reappoint, had been guilty of any action because of which it would be possible to proceed against them criminally or otherwise under the law.

Such criminal action had been freely charged against them during the campaign by the Democratic (including the so-called mugwump) press. To determine this matter I appointed two Democratic lawyers, Messrs. Fox and MacFarlane (the latter Federal District Attorney for New York under President Cleveland), and put the whole investigation in their hands.

These gentlemen made an exhaustive investigation lasting several months.

They reported that there had been grave delinquency in the prosecution of the work, delinquency which justified public condemnation of those responsible for it (who were out of office), but that there was no ground for criminal prosecution. I laid their report before the Legislature with a message in which I said: "There is probably no lawyer of high standing in the State who, after studying the report of counsel in this case and the testimony taken by the investigating commission, would disagree with them as to the impracticability of a successful prosecution. Under such circ.u.mstances the one remedy was a thorough change in the methods and management. This change has been made."

When my successor in the Governors.h.i.+p took office, Colonel Partridge retired, and Elon Hooker, finding that he could no longer act with entire disregard of politics and with an eye single to the efficiency of the work, also left. A dozen years later--having in the meantime made a marked success in a business career--he became the Treasurer of the National Progressive party.

My action in regard to the ca.n.a.ls, and the management of his office, the most important office under me, by Colonel Partridge, established my relations with Mr. Platt from the outset on pretty nearly the right basis. But, besides various small difficulties, we had one or two serious bits of trouble before my duties as Governor ceased. It must be remembered that Mr. Platt was to all intents and purposes a large part of, and sometimes a majority of, the Legislature. There were a few entirely independent men such as Nathaniel Elsberg, Regis Post, and Alford Cooley, in each of the two houses; the remainder were under the control of the Republican and Democratic bosses, but could also be more or less influenced by an aroused public opinion. The two machines were apt to make common cause if their vital interests were touched. It was my business to devise methods by which either the two machines could be kept apart or else overthrown if they came together.

My desire was to achieve results, and not merely to issue manifestoes of virtue. It is very easy to be efficient if the efficiency is based on unscrupulousness, and it is still easier to be virtuous if one is content with the purely negative virtue which consists in not doing anything wrong, but being wholly unable to accomplish anything positive for good. My favorite quotation from Josh Billings again applies: It is so much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. My duty was to combine both idealism and efficiency. At that time the public conscience was still dormant as regards many species of political and business misconduct, as to which during the next decade it became sensitive. I had to work with the tools at hand and to take into account the feeling of the people, which I have already described. My aim was persistently to refuse to be put in a position where what I did would seem to be a mere faction struggle against Senator Platt. My aim was to make a fight only when I could so manage it that there could be no question in the minds of honest men that my prime purpose was not to attack Mr. Platt or any one else except as a necessary incident to securing clean and efficient government.

In each case I did my best to persuade Mr. Platt not to oppose me. I endeavored to make it clear to him that I was not trying to wrest the organization from him; and I always gave him in detail the reasons why I felt I had to take the position I intended to adopt. It was only after I had exhausted all the resources of my patience that I would finally, if he still proved obstinate, tell him that I intended to make the fight anyhow. As I have said, the Senator was an old and feeble man in physique, and it was possible for him to go about very little. Until Friday evening he would be kept at his duties at Was.h.i.+ngton, while I was in Albany. If I wished to see him it generally had to be at his hotel in New York on Sat.u.r.day, and usually I would go there to breakfast with him. The one thing I would not permit was anything in the nature of a secret or clandestine meeting. I always insisted on going openly. Solemn reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid attention to the name and not the thing, were much exercised over my "breakfasting with Platt." Whenever I breakfasted with him they became sure that the fact carried with it some sinister significance. The worthy creatures never took the trouble to follow the sequence of facts and events for themselves. If they had done so they would have seen that any series of breakfasts with Platt always meant that I was going to do something he did not like, and that I was trying, courteously and frankly, to reconcile him to it. My object was to make it as easy as possible for him to come with me. As long as there was no clash between us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came or was imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was always the prelude to some active warfare.[*] In every instance I substantially carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way in which I had originally hoped.

[*] To ill.u.s.trate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899. He had been trying to get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another Judge Y. I wrote: "There is a strong feeling among the judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at 8:30."

There were various measures to which he gave a grudging and querulous a.s.sent without any break being threatened. I secured the reenactment of the Civil Service Law, which under my predecessor had very foolishly been repealed. I secured a ma.s.s of labor legislation, including the enactment of laws to increase the number of factory inspectors, to create a Tenement House Commission (whose findings resulted in further and excellent legislation to improve housing conditions), to regulate and improve sweatshop labor, to make the eight-hour and prevailing rate of wages law effective, to secure the genuine enforcement of the act relating to the hours of railway workers, to compel railways to equip freight trains with air-brakes, to regulate the working hours of women and protect both women and children from dangerous machinery, to enforce good scaffolding provisions for workmen on buildings, to provide seats for the use of waitresses in hotels and restaurants, to reduce the hours of labor for drug-store clerks, to provide for the registration of laborers for munic.i.p.al employment. I tried hard but failed to secure an employers' liability law and the state control of employment offices.

There was hard fighting over some of these bills, and, what was much more serious, there was effort to get round the law by trickery and by securing its inefficient enforcement. I was continually helped by men with whom I had gotten in touch while in the Police Department; men such as James Bronson Reynolds, through whom I first became interested in settlement work on the East Side. Once or twice I went suddenly down to New York City without warning any one and traversed the tenement-house quarters, visiting various sweat-shops picked at random. Jake Riis accompanied me; and as a result of our inspection we got not only an improvement in the law but a still more marked improvement in its administration. Thanks chiefly to the activity and good sense of Dr.

John H. Pryor, of Buffalo, and by the use of every pound of pressure which as Governor I could bring to bear in legitimate fas.h.i.+on--including a special emergency message--we succeeded in getting through a bill providing for the first State hospital for incipient tuberculosis. We got valuable laws for the farmer; laws preventing the adulteration of food products (which laws were equally valuable to the consumer), and laws helping the dairyman. In addition to labor legislation I was able to do a good deal for forest preservation and the protection of our wild life. All that later I strove for in the Nation in connection with Conservation was foreshadowed by what I strove to obtain for New York State when I was Governor; and I was already working in connection with Gifford Pinchot and Newell. I secured better administration, and some improvement in the laws themselves. The improvement in administration, and in the character of the game and forest wardens, was secured partly as the result of a conference in the executive chamber which I held with forty of the best guides and woodsmen of the Adirondacks.

As regards most legislation, even that affecting labor and the forests, I got on fairly well with the machine. But on the two issues in which "big business" and the kind of politics which is allied to big business were most involved we clashed hard--and clas.h.i.+ng with Senator Platt meant clas.h.i.+ng with the entire Republican organization, and with the organized majority in each house of the Legislature. One clash was in connection with the Superintendent of Insurance, a man whose office made him a factor of immense importance in the big business circles of New York. The then inc.u.mbent of the office was an efficient man, the boss of an up-State county, a veteran politician and one of Mr. Platt's right-hand men. Certain investigations which I made--in the course of the fight--showed that this Superintendent of Insurance had been engaged in large business operations in New York City. These operations had thrown him into a peculiarly intimate business contact of one sort and another with various financiers with whom I did not deem it expedient that the Superintendent of Insurance, while such, should have any intimate and secret money-making relations. Moreover, the gentleman in question represented the straitest sect of the old-time spoils politicians. I therefore determined not to reappoint him. Unless I could get his successor confirmed, however, he would stay in under the law, and the Republican machine, with the a.s.sistance of Tammany, expected to control far more than a majority of all the Senators.

Mr. Platt issued an ultimatum to me that the inc.u.mbent must be reappointed or else that he would fight, and that if he chose to fight the man would stay in anyhow because I could not oust him--for under the New York Const.i.tution the a.s.sent of the Senate was necessary not only to appoint a man to office but to remove him from office. As always with Mr. Platt, I persistently refused to lose my temper, no matter what he said--he was much too old and physically feeble for there to be any point of honor in taking up any of his remarks--and I merely explained good-humoredly that I had made up my mind and that the gentleman in question would not be retained. As for not being able to get his successor confirmed, I pointed out that as soon as the Legislature adjourned I could and would appoint another man temporarily. Mr.

Platt then said that the inc.u.mbent would be put back as soon as the Legislature reconvened; I admitted that this was possible, but added cheerfully that I would remove him again just as soon as that Legislature adjourned, and that even though I had an uncomfortable time myself, I would guarantee to make my opponents more uncomfortable still.

We parted without any sign of reaching an agreement.

There remained some weeks before final action could be taken, and the Senator was confident that I would have to yield. His most efficient allies were the pretended reformers, most of them my open or covert enemies, who loudly insisted that I must make an open fight on the Senator himself and on the Republican organization. This was what he wished, for at that time there was no way of upsetting him within the Republican party; and, as I have said, if I had permitted the contest to a.s.sume the shape of a mere faction fight between the Governor and the United States Senator, I would have insured the victory of the machine. So I blandly refused to let the thing become a personal fight, explaining again and again that I was perfectly willing to appoint an organization man, and naming two or three whom I was willing to appoint, but also explaining that I would not retain the inc.u.mbent, and would not appoint any man of his type. Meanwhile pressure on behalf of the said inc.u.mbent began to come from the business men of New York.

The Superintendent of Insurance was not a man whose ill will the big life insurance companies cared to incur, and company after company pa.s.sed resolutions asking me to reappoint him, although in private some of the men who signed these resolutions nervously explained that they did not mean what they had written, and hoped I would remove the man. A citizen prominent in reform circles, marked by the Cato-like austerity of his reform professions, had a son who was a counsel for one of the insurance companies. The father was engaged in writing letters to the papers demanding in the name of uncompromising virtue that I should not only get rid of the Superintendent of Insurance, but in his place should appoint somebody or other personally offensive to Senator Platt--which last proposition, if adopted, would have meant that the Superintendent of Insurance would have stayed in, for the reasons I have already given.

Meanwhile the son came to see me on behalf of the insurance company he represented and told me that the company was anxious that there should be a change in the superintendency; that if I really meant to fight, they thought they had influence with four of the State Senators, Democrats and Republicans, whom they could get to vote to confirm the man I nominated, but that they wished to be sure that I would not abandon the fight, because it would be a very bad thing for them if I started the fight and then backed down. I told my visitor that he need be under no apprehensions, that I would certainly see the fight through.

A man who has much to do with that kind of politics which concerns both New York politicians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt when thirty-six hours later I read in the morning paper an open letter from the officials of the very company who had been communicating with me in which they enthusiastically advocated the renomination of the Superintendent. Shortly afterwards my visitor, the young lawyer, called me up on the telephone and explained that the officials did not mean what they had said in this letter, that they had been obliged to write it for fear of the Superintendent, but that if they got the chance they intended to help me get rid of him. I thanked him and said I thought I could manage the fight by myself. I did not hear from him again, though his father continued to write public demands that I should practice pure virtue, undefiled and offensive.

Meanwhile Senator Platt declined to yield. I had picked out a man, a friend of his, who I believed would make an honest and competent official, and whose position in the organization was such that I did not believe the Senate would venture to reject him. However, up to the day before the appointment was to go to the Senate, Mr. Platt remained unyielding. I saw him that afternoon and tried to get him to yield, but he said No, that if I insisted, it would be war to the knife, and my destruction, and perhaps the destruction of the party. I said I was very sorry, that I could not yield, and if the war came it would have to come, and that next morning I should send in the name of the Superintendent's successor. We parted, and soon afterwards I received from the man who was at the moment Mr. Platt's right-hand lieutenant a request to know where he could see me that evening. I appointed the Union League Club. My visitor went over the old ground, explained that the Senator would under no circ.u.mstances yield, that he was certain to win in the fight, that my reputation would be destroyed, and that he wished to save me from such a lamentable smash-up as an ending to my career. I could only repeat what I had already said, and after half an hour of futile argument I rose and said that nothing was to be gained by further talk and that I might as well go. My visitor repeated that I had this last chance, and that ruin was ahead of me if I refused it; whereas, if I accepted, everything would be made easy. I shook my head and answered, "There is nothing to add to what I have already said." He responded, "You have made up your mind?" and I said, "I have." He then said, "You know it means your ruin?" and I answered, "Well, we will see about that," and walked toward the door. He said, "You understand, the fight will begin to-morrow and will be carried on to the bitter end."

I said, "Yes," and added, as I reached the door, "Good night." Then, as the door opened, my opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call him, whose face was as impa.s.sive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John Hamlin in a poker game, said: "Hold on! We accept. Send in So-and-so [the man I had named]. The Senator is very sorry, but he will make no further opposition!" I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely through to the final limit. My success in the affair, coupled with the appointment of Messrs. Partridge and Hooker, secured me against further effort to interfere with my handling of the executive departments.

It was in connection with the insurance business that I first met Mr.

George W. Perkins. He came to me with a letter of introduction from the then Speaker of the National House of Representatives, Tom Reed, which ran: "Mr. Perkins is a personal friend of mine, whose straightforwardness and intelligence will commend to you whatever he has to say. If you will give him proper opportunity to explain his business, I have no doubt that what he will say will be worthy of your attention."

Mr. Perkins wished to see me with reference to a bill that had just been introduced in the Legislature, which aimed to limit the aggregate volume of insurance that any New York State company could a.s.sume. There were then three big insurance companies in New York--the Mutual Life, Equitable, and New York Life. Mr. Perkins was a Vice-President of the New York Life Insurance Company and Mr. John A. McCall was its President. I had just finished my fight against the Superintendent of Insurance, whom I refused to continue in office. Mr. McCall had written me a very strong letter urging that he be retained, and had done everything he could to aid Senator Platt in securing his retention. The Mutual Life and Equitable people had openly followed the same course, but in private had hedged. They were both backing the proposed bill. Mr.

McCall was opposed to it; he was in California, and just before starting thither he had been told by the Mutual Life and Equitable that the Limitation Bill was favored by me and would be put through if such a thing were possible. Mr. McCall did not know me, and on leaving for California told Mr. Perkins that from all he could learn he was sure I was bent on putting this bill through, and that nothing he could say to me would change my view; in fact, because he had fought so hard to retain the old Insurance Superintendent, he felt that I would be particularly opposed to anything he might wish done.

As a matter of fact, I had no such feeling. I had been carefully studying the question. I had talked with the Mutual Life and Equitable people about it, but was not committed to any particular course, and had grave doubts as to whether it was well to draw the line on size instead of on conduct. I was therefore very glad to see Perkins and get a new point of view. I went over the matter with a great deal of care and at considerable length, and after we had thrashed the matter out pretty fully and Perkins had laid before me in detail the methods employed by Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries to handle their large insurance companies, I took the position that there undoubtedly were evils in the insurance business, but that they did not consist in insuring people's lives, for that certainly was not an evil; and I did not see how the real evils could be eradicated by limiting or suppressing a company's ability to protect an additional number of lives with insurance. I therefore announced that I would not favor a bill that limited volume of business, and would not sign it if it were pa.s.sed; but that I favored legislation that would make it impossible to place, through agents, policies that were ambiguous and misleading, or to pay exorbitant prices to agents for business, or to invest policy-holders'

money in improper securities, or to give power to officers to use the company's funds for their own personal profit. In reaching this determination I was helped by Mr. Loeb, then merely a stenographer in my office, but who had already attracted my attention both by his efficiency and by his loyalty to his former employers, who were for the most part my political opponents. Mr. Loeb gave me much information about various improper practices in the insurance business. I began to gather data on the subject, with the intention of bringing about corrective legislation, for at that time I expected to continue in office as Governor. But in a few weeks I was nominated as Vice-President, and my successor did nothing about the matter.

So far as I remember, this was the first time the question of correcting evils in a business by limiting the volume of business to be done was ever presented to me, and my decision in the matter was on all fours with the position I have always since taken when any similar principle was involved. At the time when I made my decision about the Limitation Bill, I was on friendly terms with the Mutual and Equitable people who were back of it, whereas I did not know Mr. McCall at all, and Mr.

Perkins only from hearing him discuss the bill.

An interesting feature of the matter developed subsequently. Five years later, after the insurance investigations took place, the Mutual Life strongly urged the pa.s.sage of a Limitation Bill, and, because of the popular feeling developed by the exposure of the improper practices of the companies, this bill was generally approved. Governor Hughes adopted the suggestion, such a bill was pa.s.sed by the Legislature, and Governor Hughes signed it. This bill caused the three great New York companies to reduce markedly the volume of business they were doing; it threw a great many agents out of employment, and materially curtailed the foreign business of the companies--which business was bringing annually a considerable sum of money to this country for investment. In short, the experiment worked so badly that before Governor Hughes went out of office one of the very last bills he signed was one that permitted the life insurance companies to increase their business each year by an amount representing a certain percentage of the business they had previously done. This in practice, within a few years, practically annulled the Limitation Bill that had been previously pa.s.sed. The experiment of limiting the size of business, of legislating against it merely because it was big, had been tried, and had failed so completely that the authors of the bill had themselves in effect repealed it. My action in refusing to try the experiment had been completely justified.

As a sequel to this incident I got Mr. Perkins to serve on the Palisade Park Commission. At the time I was taking active part in the effort to save the Palisades from vandalism and destruction by getting the States of New York and New Jersey jointly to include them in a public park.

It is not easy to get a responsible and capable man of business to undertake such a task, which is unpaid, which calls on his part for an immense expenditure of time, money, and energy, which offers no reward of any kind, and which entails the certainty of abuse and misrepresentation. Mr. Perkins accepted the position, and has filled it for the last thirteen years, doing as disinterested, efficient, and useful a bit of public service as any man in the State has done throughout these thirteen years.

The case of most importance in which I clashed with Senator Platt related to a matter of fundamental governmental policy, and was the first step I ever took toward bringing big corporations under effective governmental control. In this case I had to fight the Democratic machine as well as the Republican machine, for Senator Hill and Senator Platt were equally opposed to my action, and the big corporation men, the big business men back of both of them, took precisely the same view of these matters without regard to their party feelings on other points. What I did convulsed people at that time, and marked the beginning of the effort, at least in the Eastern states, to make the great corporations really responsible to popular wish and governmental command. But we have gone so far past the stage in which we then were that now it seems well-nigh incredible that there should have been any opposition at all to what I at that time proposed.

The subst.i.tution of electric power for horse power in the street car lines of New York offered a fruitful chance for the most noxious type of dealing between business men and politicians. The franchises granted by New York were granted without any attempt to secure from the grantees returns, in the way of taxation or otherwise, for the value received.

The fact that they were thus granted by improper favoritism, a favoritism which in many cases was unquestionably secured by downright bribery, led to all kinds of trouble. In return for the continuance of these improper favors to the corporations the politicians expected improper favors in the way of excessive campaign contributions, often contributed by the same corporation at the same time to two opposing parties. Before I became Governor a bill had been introduced into the New York Legislature to tax the franchises of these street railways. It affected a large number of corporations, but particularly those in New York and Buffalo. It had been suffered to slumber undisturbed, as none of the people in power dreamed of taking it seriously, and both the Republican and Democratic machines were hostile to it. Under the rules of the New York Legislature a bill could always be taken up out of its turn and pa.s.sed if the Governor sent in a special emergency message on its behalf.

After I was elected Governor I had my attention directed to the franchise tax matter, looked into the subject, and came to the conclusion that it was a matter of plain decency and honesty that these companies should pay a tax on their franchises, inasmuch as they did nothing that could be considered as service rendered the public in lieu of a tax. This seemed to me so evidently the common-sense and decent thing to do that I was hardly prepared for the storm of protest and anger which my proposal aroused. Senator Platt and the other machine leaders did everything to get me to abandon my intention. As usual, I saw them, talked the matter all over with them, and did my best to convert them to my way of thinking. Senator Platt, I believe, was quite sincere in his opposition. He did not believe in popular rule, and he did believe that the big business men were ent.i.tled to have things their way. He profoundly distrusted the people--naturally enough, for the kind of human nature with which a boss comes in contact is not of an exalted type. He felt that anarchy would come if there was any interference with a system by which the people in ma.s.s were, under various necessary cloaks, controlled by the leaders in the political and business worlds.

He wrote me a very strong letter of protest against my att.i.tude, expressed in dignified, friendly, and temperate language, but using one word in a curious way. This was the word "altruistic." He stated in his letter that he had not objected to my being independent in politics, because he had been sure that I had the good of the party at heart, and meant to act fairly and honorably; but that he had been warned, before I became a candidate, by a number of his business friends that I was a dangerous man because I was "altruistic," and that he now feared that my conduct would justify the alarm thus expressed. I was interested in this, not only because Senator Platt was obviously sincere, but because of the way in which he used "altruistic" as a term of reproach, as if it was Communistic or Socialistic--the last being a word he did use to me when, as now and then happened, he thought that my proposals warranted fairly reckless vituperation.

Senator Platt's letter ran in part as follows:

"When the subject of your nomination was under consideration, there was one matter that gave me real anxiety. I think you will have no trouble in appreciating the fact that it was _not_ the matter of your independence. I think we have got far enough along in our political acquaintance for you to see that my support in a convention does not imply subsequent 'demands,' nor any other relation that may not reasonably exist for the welfare of the party. . . . The thing that did bother me was this: I had heard from a good many sources that you were a little loose on the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and combinations, and, indeed, on those numerous questions which have recently arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the right of a man to run his own business in his own way, with due respect of course to the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code. Or, to get at it even more clearly, I understood from a number of business men, and among them many of your own personal friends, that you entertained various altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, but which before they could safely be put into law needed very profound consideration. . . .

You have just adjourned a Legislature which created a good opinion throughout the State. I congratulate you heartily upon this fact because I sincerely believe, as everybody else does, that this good impression exists very largely as a result of your personal influence in the Legislative chambers. But at the last moment, and to my very great surprise, you did a thing which has caused the business community of New York to wonder how far the notions of Populism, as laid down in Kansas and Nebraska, have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State of New York."

In my answer I pointed out to the Senator that I had as Governor unhesitatingly acted, at Buffalo and elsewhere, to put down mobs, without regard to the fact that the professed leaders of labor furiously denounced me for so doing; but that I could no more tolerate wrong committed in the name of property than wrong committed against property.

My letter ran in part as follows:

"I knew that you had just the feelings that you describe; that is, apart from my 'impulsiveness,' you felt that there was a justifiable anxiety among men of means, and especially men representing large corporate interests, lest I might feel too strongly on what you term the 'altruistic' side in matters of labor and capital and as regards the relations of the State to great corporations. . . . I know that when parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] the tendency is to force everybody into one of two camps, and to throw out entirely men like myself, who are as strongly opposed to Populism in every stage as the greatest representative of corporate wealth, but who also feel strongly that many of these representatives of enormous corporate wealth have themselves been responsible for a portion of the conditions against which Bryanism is in ignorant revolt. I do not believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our att.i.tude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing that, whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others really do not correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form; on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand perfectly that such an att.i.tude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when pa.s.sions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise att.i.tude. . . . I appreciate absolutely [what Mr.

Platt had said] that any applause I get will be too evanescent for a moment's consideration. I appreciate absolutely that the people who now loudly approve of my action in the franchise tax bill will forget all about it in a fortnight, and that, on the other hand, the very powerful interests adversely affected will always remember it. . . . [The leaders] urged upon me that I personally could not afford to take this action, for under no circ.u.mstances could I ever again be nominated for any public office, as no corporation would subscribe to a campaign fund if I was on the ticket, and that they would subscribe most heavily to beat me; and when I asked if this were true of Republican corporations, the cynical answer was made that the corporations that subscribed most heavily to the campaign funds subscribed impartially to both party organizations. Under all these circ.u.mstances, it seemed to me there was no alternative but to do what I could to secure the pa.s.sage of the bill."

These two letters, written in the spring of 1899, express clearly the views of the two elements of the Republican party, whose hostility gradually grew until it culminated, thirteen years later. In 1912 the political and financial forces of which Mr. Platt had once been the spokesman, usurped the control of the party machinery and drove out of the party the men who were loyally endeavoring to apply the principles of the founders of the party to the needs and issues of their own day.

I had made up my mind that if I could get a show in the Legislature the bill would pa.s.s, because the people had become interested and the representatives would scarcely dare to vote the wrong way. Accordingly, on April 27, 1899, I sent a special message to the a.s.sembly, certifying that the emergency demanded the immediate pa.s.sage of the bill. The machine leaders were bitterly angry, and the Speaker actually tore up the message without reading it to the a.s.sembly. That night they were busy trying to arrange some device for the defeat of the bill--which was not difficult, as the session was about to close. At seven the next morning I was informed of what had occurred. At eight I was in the Capitol at the Executive chamber, and sent in another special message, which opened as follows: "I learn that the emergency message which I sent last evening to the a.s.sembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax Bill has not been read. I therefore send hereby another message on the subject. I need not impress upon the a.s.sembly the need of pa.s.sing this bill at once." I sent this message to the a.s.sembly, by my secretary, William J. Youngs, afterwards United States District Attorney of Kings, with an intimation that if this were not promptly read I should come up in person and read it. Then, as so often happens, the opposition collapsed and the bill went through both houses with a rush. I had in the House stanch friends, such as Regis Post and Alford Cooley, men of character and courage, who would have fought to a finish had the need arisen.