The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (71 page)

An effective follow-up speech is made by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of
Century
magazine. He confesses that he has never stood on a political platform before, but is doing so now in order to praise “the best municipal nomination that has been made in my time … Mr. Roosevelt is, in my opinion, the pluckiest, the bravest man inside of politics in the whole country.”
³⁵
Amid thunderous applause, the nomination is declared ratified.

The candidate shakes hands for twenty minutes until aides drag him from the platform. Outside, in the rain, a large crowd is waiting to serenade him. “I hope to see you all down in the City Hall after January 1, when I am Mayor,” says Roosevelt. He bows and he smiles.
³⁶

A
N EXTRAORDINARY HUSH
descended on the city’s political headquarters next day, 28 October. Everybody except Roosevelt, it seemed, was aboard sight-seeing boats in the Bay, or fighting for a foothold on Bedloe’s Island, where, that afternoon, President Cleveland was due to unveil the great Statue of Liberty.
³⁷
Roosevelt, therefore, had a few hours alone at his desk, undisturbed except by a distant thumping of drums, to ponder press reports of his birthday rally, and review his chances for the mayoralty.

While the reports were generally flattering, there was no change in the partisan attitudes of any newspaper. The
Times, Tribune, Commercial Advertiser
, and
Mail & Express
were for him; the
Herald, Sun, World
, and
Daily News
were for Hewitt. Only a few smudgy ethnic sheets were for George. The balance, in other words, was fairly even: while Hewitt’s newspapers had more readers, Roosevelt’s reached more influential people. With his popular momentum increasing, and only five days left to go, it was tempting to believe the
Times
’s headline: “
ROOSEVELT SURE TO WIN
—
THAT’S WHAT LAST NIGHT’S MEETING INDICATES
.” The
Tribune
carried even more encouraging news, under the headline, “
MR. ROOSEVELT’S PROSPECTS
—
HIS ELECTION NOW DEEMED CERTAIN
.” It reported that the U.S. Chief Supervisor of Elections, after making an independent survey, projected a total vote of 85,850 for Roosevelt, 75,000 for Hewitt, and 60,000 for George.
³⁸

Even as he rejoiced in these figures, Roosevelt must have felt a threat in George’s amazing total. For a political virgin with no charisma and eccentric, not to say revolutionary views, George had proved to be a redoubtable campaigner. His platform, representing the aspirations of “the disinherited class,” was high-toned and reassuringly democratic. Businessmen as well as laborers nodded their heads over such sentences as “The true purpose of government is, among other things, to give everyone security that he shall enjoy the fruits of his labor, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, and the unscrupulous from robbing the honest … The ballot is the only method by which in our Republic the redress of political and social grievances can be sought.”
³⁹
There was no doubt as to George’s sincere identity with the working class, nor to his personal honor (he had refused Tammany’s offer of a seat in Congress if he would withdraw). One had to admire the dignity with which the little man climbed again and again onto his favorite pedestal, a horse-cart unshackled in the middle of some grimy street. “What we are beginning here,” George would yell, at the sea of cloth caps around him, “is the great American struggle for the ending of industrial slavery.” Sometimes he would go too far, as when he proclaimed that the French Revolution, “with all its drawbacks and horrors,” was “the noblest epoch in modern history,” and was “about to repeat itself here.”
⁴⁰
Such inflammatory statements delighted his unlettered listeners, not to mention the nation’s anarchists, who looked forward to civil war if George was elected.

Roosevelt had confidence enough in the American democratic system to disbelieve that such a man would ever triumph at the polls. The real danger, as he saw it, was that Henry George’s hell-raising image (so like his own, unfortunately) might, come Election Day, turn responsible voters away from
both
of them, in favor of the solid and sober Abram S. Hewitt. Already Democratic papers were chanting the ominous refrain, “A vote for Roosevelt is a vote for George.”
⁴¹

However it was not in his nature to think negatively. Hope lay in positive action. From now on he must campaign at an increasing rate, to offset any possible attrition in his lead. By late afternoon, when Republican Committee members began to arrive back from Bedloe’s Island, he was already hard at work on his evening’s speeches, and autographing colored lithographs of himself.
⁴²

“I
T IS SUCH HAPPINESS
to see him at his very best once more,” Bamie wrote to Edith in London. “This is the first time since the [1884] Investigation days that he has had enough work to keep him exerting all his powers. Theodore is the only person who has the power (except Father who possessed it in a different way) of making me almost worship him … I would never say, or, write this except to you, but it is very restful to feel how you care for him and how happy he is in his devotion to you …”
⁴³

A
FAIR IMPRESSION
of the pace of Roosevelt’s candidacy for Mayor may be gained by following him through one night of his campaign—Friday, 29 October.
⁴⁴

At
8:00 P.M.
, having snatched a hasty dinner near headquarters, he takes a hansom to the Grand Opera House, on Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue, for the first of five scheduled addresses in various parts of the city. His audience is worshipful, shabby, and exclusively black. (One of the more interesting features of the campaign has been Roosevelt’s evident appeal to, and fondness for, the black voter.) He begins by admitting that his campaign planners had not allowed for “this magnificent meeting” of colored citizens.
“For the first time, therefore, since the opening of the campaign I have begun to take matters a little in my own hands!” Laughter and applause. “I like to speak to an audience of colored people,” Roosevelt says simply, “for that is only another way of saying that I am speaking to an audience of Republicans.” More applause. He reminds his listeners that he has “always stood up for the colored race,” and tells them about the time he put a black man in the chair of the Chicago Convention. Apologizing for his tight schedule, he winds up rapidly, and dashes out of the hall to a standing ovation.
⁴⁵
A carriage is waiting outside; the driver plies his whip; by 8:30 Roosevelt is at Concordia Hall, on Twenty-eighth Street and Avenue A. Here he shouts at a thousand well-scrubbed immigrants, “Do you want a radical reformer?” “YES WE DO!” comes the reply.
⁴⁶

At
9:00 P.M
. he is in a ward hall at 438 Third Avenue, where the local boss introduces him as “the Cowboy Candidate.” He has had time to get used to this phrase—not that he dislikes it—and jokes that “as the cowboy vote is rather light in this city I will have to appeal to the Republicans.” But the audience is more interested in his experiences as deputy sheriff than his views on municipal reform, and Roosevelt makes his escape. He promises to return, as Mayor, with many stories about cowboys, bears, “and other associates in the West.”
⁴⁷

Now he rattles uptown to Grand Central Station, where a special locomotive (courtesy of New York & Harlem Railroad President Chauncey Depew) is waiting, with steam up, to speed him to Morrisania, in the Bronx. Roosevelt climbs into the observation cab over the boiler; the engine leaps north at sixty miles an hour. For thirteen minutes, red and green lights flash by: all railroad traffic has been halted in his favor. He arrives at Tremont Station only one minute late, and runs into the neighboring hall. Ladies of the 24th Ward present him with an immense floral horseshoe. He says that it is appropriate for a youthful candidate to come to this “young” district of the city. “Three times three cheers for the Boy!” yells someone. Not forgetting his bouquet, Roosevelt jumps back on the train and hurries south across the Harlem River. He reaches the 22nd Assembly District Roosevelt Club in time for his final address
of the evening at
10:30 P.M
. Then, at last, he can walk home to Bamie’s house, where Baby Lee lies sleeping.
⁴⁸

Somebody asked him the following morning, Saturday, if he was not exhausted by the pace he was setting himself. “Not in the least!” Roosevelt replied.
⁴⁹
His wellsprings of energy continued to bubble through the last night of the campaign, but close observers noticed a gradual decline in his confidence of victory. “The ‘timid good,’ ” he exasperatedly wrote Lodge, “are for Hewitt.” The word “if” crept frequently into his speeches: “If I am not knifed in the house of my friends I shall win.”
⁵⁰

K
NIVES FLEW
thick and fast in those final days, and he could not be sure whether some of the throwers might be his fellow Republicans. A sudden rumor went around that James G. Blaine was coming to lend a hand in the campaign, just when Roosevelt thought he had at last explained away his support of the Plumed Knight in 1884. He was obliged to issue an angry statement that Blaine “had not and would not be invited to speak here.”
⁵¹
At a large downtown rally for Hewitt, ex–State Senator David L. Foster made a devastating analysis of ex-Assemblyman Roosevelt’s democratization of the Board of Aldermen: “The result of this change in the first year of its adoption was that two of them died, five left the country, and about seventeen of them were indicted for crime.”
⁵²
Uptown, meanwhile, moonlighting newsboys delivered Democratic newspapers to Republican subscribers, and the slogan “A Vote for Roosevelt is a Vote for George” penetrated into the heart of his traditional constituency.
⁵³

These same newspapers shrewdly caricatured the “boy” image, knowing that thousands of voters felt nervous about putting a twenty-eight-year-old in charge of America’s largest city. “It has been objected that I am a boy,” said Roosevelt wearily—he had been hearing the charge for years—“but I can only offer the time-honored reply, that years will cure me of that.” He must have been humiliated by a full, front-page cartoon in the
Daily Graphic
, entitled “The Two Candidates,” showing Henry George and Abram Hewitt squaring off at each other like giants: only after close inspection
did readers perceive the tiny, bespectacled head of Roosevelt peeping out of George’s tote-bag.
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