Such a man was Theodore Roosevelt, eager for the advance of his country into ever nobler paths and ready always to sacrifice his personal ease and self-interest for that end.

He had ideals in many fields - scholarship, friendship, as husband and father, and wherever his active, eager spirit led. But apparently his ideal of his native land had special authority over him. He loved his country profoundly, and he seemed to see it glorified, radiant before and above him like a heavenly constellation. And by it, through all his strenuous career, his path was determined and his footsteps guided.

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CHAPTER VIII

"THE FINEST" REFINED

We read in the ancient Greek myths and legends about the "Labors of Hercules", but we are not told whether that hero saw them in series ahead of him, or took them one at a time, seeing and accomplishing each for itself alone. The entire series, taken as a whole, might have daunted him. If Theodore Roosevelt, at twenty-two, standing on the threshold of his mature life, could have known the series of arduous tasks of public service in which his life would be summed up at the age of sixtytwo- even he of iron will and unflagging enthusiasm might have been dismayed.

Other men have held public office, have done good routine work, and have thriven on it; they have made of their name scarcely more than a rubber stamp, and have left a fairly good record for efficiency. But he was never content with this perfunctory method. He sought to bring every public work upon which he entered as close as possible to perfection. That is idealism in a working man. And when the man holds his idealism in one hand

and with the other hand lays hold of the realities of human nature and the facts of human life, individual and group- that is sane, practical ideal

ism.

After his reformative career in the New York legislature, Roosevelt was rather expected to reform whatever department he was put into. And most of them needed reform. So when William D. Strong, himself "Reform Mayor" of New York, offered the position of Police Commissioner to him, the mayor expected a certain amount of disturbance and protest throughout the dives and saloons of the city and among the blackmailers at City Hall. And he was not disappointed. The smaller liquor dealers and retailers without a "pull” had been forced to pay to the police any sums demanded. But the larger dealers got immunity by reason of the political support they gave to Tammany. Even policemen were appointed to the force only after their payment of money to the "men higher up." Three hundred dollars was the amount required from a man seeking the position of patrolman.

The old Knickerbocker municipality had become a sink of iniquity, a cesspool of corruption. Good men had tried to improve conditions, but had given up the task. They sadly prophesied the same outcome for Roosevelt. Following Lowell's couplet,

it might be said that "Wrong was on the throne" and was sardonically awaiting a gagged and blindfolded victim "on the scaffold." But the young veteran from the Civil Service reform arena entered smilingly, yet sternly, upon his "job", put two iron years of effort into it, and when in 1897 he left it, the judge who charged the Grand Jury of New York County congratulated that jury and the public at large "upon the phenomenal decrease in crime, especially of the violent sort."

It has been said of Roosevelt, now that his eager, strenuous life is over, that great though he was, he lacked the ability to, delegate his work to under officials. There are two sides to that method. If those delegated under officials are faithful, well and good; their superior is left free to cover more territory, and thus accomplish more. But fully half the inefficiencies and corruptions in governments arise from the failure of weak or wicked "under officials" to carry out measures which were born in purity and high intent in the hearts of their superior officers.

And

Well did Theodore Roosevelt know this. throughout his victorious career he owed much of his strength and efficiency to the fact that he insisted on basing his actions upon facts which he had at first hand. Therefore, in his transformation of the corrupt police of New York, in his refining of

"The Finest" for thus that executive municipal body was often called - he dug down to bottom facts of fraud and tyranny; he even patrolled the streets by day and night, to know for himself where the blame lay. These diurnal and nocturnal tours of investigation gained for him among the initiate the not inappropriate name of Haroun-al-Roosevelt; and thus East and West did meet.

The story of his adventurous two years as Police Commissioner would be imperfect without grateful reference to Jacob Riis, at that time a man whose vocation was newspaper reportorial work, but whose avocation was the uplifting of New York City out of fraud, tyranny, and corruption to justice and self-respect. Rudyard Kipling is reported to have said of New York that "It had a government by the worst elements of its population, tempered by occasional insurrections of respectable citizens." But Jacob Riis's struggle for the redemption of the city was not occasional. It was continuous. Alone and unaided he would have fought the good fight. But when Theodore Roosevelt stepped into Police Headquarters at Mulberry Street, these two men entered into one of the noblest, purest coalitions in all history. They worked together for municipal reforms, and incidentally they formed a friendship men of extremely divergent antecedents though they were—