In light things
Prove thou the arms thou long’st to glorify,
Nor fear to work up from the lowest ranks
Whence come great Nature’s Captains. And high deeds
Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight,
But the pell-mell of men.
When a young man comes out of college he descends suddenly from the highest place in a little world to a very obscure corner in a great one. It is something of a shock, and there is apt to be a chill in the air. Unless the young man’s life has been planned beforehand and a place provided for him by others, which is exceptional, or unless he is fortunate in a strong and dominating purpose or talent which drives him to science or art or some particular profession, he finds himself at this period pausing and wondering where he can get a grip upon the vast and confused world into which he has been plunged.
It is a trying and only too frequently a disheartening experience, this looking for a career, this effort to find employment in a huge and hurrying crowd which appears to have no use for the new-comer. Roosevelt, thus cast forth on his own resources—his father, so beloved by him, having died two years before—fell to work at once, turning to the study of the law, which he did not like, and to the completion of a history of the War of 1812 which he had begun while still in college. With few exceptions, young beginners in the difficult art of writing are either too exuberant or too dry. Roosevelt said that his book was as dry as an encyclopedia, thus erring in precisely the direction one would not have expected. The book, be it said, was by no means so dry as he thought it, and it had some other admirable qualities. It was clear and thorough, and the battles by sea and land, especially the former, which involved the armaments and crews, the size and speed of the ships engaged in the famous frigate and sloop actions, of which we won eleven out of thirteen, were given with a minute accuracy never before attempted in the accounts of this war, and which made the book an authority, a position it holds to this day.
This was a good deal of sound work for a boy’s first year out of college. But it did not content Roosevelt. Inherited influences and inborn desires made him earnest and eager to render some public service. In pursuit of this aspiration he joined the Twenty-first Assembly District Republican Association of the city of New York, for by such machinery all politics were carried on in those days. It was not an association composed of his normal friends; in fact, the members were not only eminently practical persons but they were inclined to be rough in their methods. They were not dreamers, nor were they laboring under many illusions. Roosevelt went among them a complete stranger. He differed from them with entire frankness, concealed nothing, and by his strong and simple democratic ways, his intense Americanism, and the magical personal attraction which went with him to the end, made some devoted friends. One of the younger leaders, “Joe” Murray, believed in him, became especially attached to him, and so continued until death separated them. Through Murray’s efforts he was elected to the New York Assembly in 1881, and thus only one year after leaving college his public career began. He was just twenty-three.
Very few men make an effective State reputation in their first year in the lower branch of the State legislature. I never happened to hear of one who made a national reputation in such a body. Roosevelt did both. When he left the assembly after three years' service he was a national figure, well known, and of real importance, and also a delegate at large from the great State of New York to the Republican national convention of 1884, where he played a leading part. Energy, ability, and the most entire courage were the secret of his extraordinary success. It was a time of flagrant corporate influence in the New York Legislature, of the “Black Horse Cavalry,” of a group of members who made money by sustaining corporation measures or by levying on corporations and capital through the familiar artifice of “strike bills.” Roosevelt attacked them all openly and aggressively and never silently or quietly. He fought for the impeachment of a judge solely because he believed the judge corrupt, which surprised some of his political associates of both parties, there being, as one practical thinker observed, “no politics in politics.” He failed to secure the impeachment, but the fight did not fail, nor did the people forget it; and despite—perhaps because of—the enemies he made, he was twice reelected. He became at the same time a distinct, well-defined figure to the American people. He had touched the popular imagination. In this way he performed the unexampled feat of leaving the New York Assembly, which he had entered three years before an unknown boy, with a national reputation and with his name at least known throughout the United States. He was twenty-six years old.
When he left Chicago at the close of the national convention in June, 1884, he did not return to New York, but went West to the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri Valley, where he had purchased a ranch in the previous year. The early love of natural history which never abated had developed into a passion for hunting and for life in the open. He had begun in the wilds of Maine and then turned to the West and to a cattle ranch to gratify both tastes. The life appealed to him and he came to love it. He herded and rounded up his cattle, he worked as a cow-puncher, only rather harder than any of them, and in the intervals he hunted and shot big game. He also came in contact with men of a new type, rough, sometimes dangerous, but always vigorous and often picturesque. With them he had the same success as with the practical politicians of the Twenty-first Assembly District, although they were widely different specimens of mankind. But all alike were human at bottom and so was Roosevelt. He argued with them, rode with them, camped with them, played and joked with them, but was always master of his outfit. They respected him and also liked him, because he was at all times simple, straightforward, outspoken, and sincere. He became a popular and well-known figure in that western country and was regarded as a good fellow, a “white man,” entirely fearless, thoroughly good-natured and kind, never quarrelsome, and never safe to trifle with, bully, or threaten. The life and experiences of that time found their way into a book, The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, interesting in description and adventure and also showing a marked literary quality.
In 1886 he ran as Republican candidate for mayor of New York and might have been elected had his own party stood by him. But many excellent men of Republican faith—the “timid good,” as he called them—panic-stricken by the formidable candidacy of Henry George, flocked to the support of Mr. Abram Hewitt, the Democratic candidate, as the man most certain to defeat the menacing champion of single taxation. Roosevelt was beaten, but his campaign, which was entirely his own and the precursor of many others, his speeches with their striking quality then visible to the country for the first time, all combined to fix the attention of the people upon the losing candidate. Roosevelt was the one of the candidates who was most interesting, and again he had touched the imagination of the people and cut a little deeper into the popular consciousness and memory.
Two years more of private life, devoted to his home, where his greatest happiness was always found, to his ranch, to reading and writing books, and then came an active part in the campaign of 1888, resulting in the election of President Harrison, who made him civil-service commissioner in the spring of 1889. He was in his thirty-first year. Civil-service reform as a practical question was then in its initial stages. The law establishing it, limited in extent and forced through by a few leaders of both parties in the Senate, was only six years old. The promoters of the reform, strong in quality, but weak in numbers, had compelled a reluctant acceptance of the law by exercising a balance-of-power vote in certain States and districts. It had few earnest supporters in Congress, some lukewarm friends, and many strong opponents. All the active politicians were practically against it. Mr. Conkling had said that when Dr. Johnson told Boswell “that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel” he was ignorant of the possibilities of the word “reform,” and this witticism met with a large response.
Civil-service reform, meaning the establishment of a classified service and the removal of routine administrative offices from politics, had not reached the masses of the people at all. The average voter knew and cared nothing about it. When six years later Roosevelt resigned from the commission the great body of the people knew well what civil-service reform meant, large bodies of voters cared a great deal about it, and it was established and spreading its control. We have had many excellent men who have done good work in the Civil Service Commission, although that work is neither adventurous nor exciting and rarely attracts public attention, but no one has ever forgotten that Theodore Roosevelt was once civil-service commissioner.