We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the virtue to do them.

-TRUE AMERICANISM

CHAPTER II

AN IDEALIST IN POLITICS

Theodore, Sr., had left his son a comfortable competence, but he had left him also the knowledge that this is a work-a-day world to which every man should give the best he has. This was the better heritage of the two. Theodore, Jr., from early youth had been a nature lover. At the age of fourteen he went with his family to Egypt, and while there collected, classified, and stuffed many specimens. He became more and more interested in natural history, and on entering college decided to be a naturalist of the Audubon or John Burroughs type. He entertained at that period no intention of following a political career. As the time of graduation approached, he changed his idea of a life work somewhat, concluding to study law, with natural history as an avoca

tion. But when he looked about him and saw great corporation lawyers engaging in questionable practices, granting justice to one and denying it to another, he made up his mind, actuated by that strict sense of justice which was a Roosevelt tradition, to look elsewhere for a profession.

He joined the Republican party, and in the fall of 1881 was elected a member of the New York legislature, and reëlected the two succeeding years. He said frankly that he would not have entered politics had he not inherited an independent competence from his father, for, as he explained, a man who depended on political office for a living would be obliged to compromise too often with his conscience, and would find the quality of service he could render the people much impaired.

In the early eighties, New York politics was in the hands of owners of saloons, shyster lawyers, grooms, and gang leaders. Men of standing and family pride kept themselves free from the unclean scramble for office. His friends tried to dissuade him. He believed

that it was the plain everyday duty of men of his station and training to enter the fight for public righteousness.

The politicians of those times were spoilsmen. One leader stated, "I am in politics working for my own pocket all the timesame as you." The coming of this youthful idealist who was a church member, who taught Sunday-school classes, who regulated his life by the Ten Commandments, was sure to puzzle the hardened old leaders. But his name looked like a winning one, and they backed him. Once he was in office, once he learned the extent of the circle of graft, greed, and corruption that disgraced the state, he went to work with both fists.

It is a mistake to suppose that Roosevelt went into politics actuated solely by the idea that he was to sacrifice himself and benefit mankind. The thought would have been abhorrent to him. He was not a self-seeker; his motives were of the purest; but he would not pose as a "better than thou" sort of individual who had been called to a superior kind of work.