Any man accustomed to dealing with practical politics can with difficulty keep a straight face when he reads or listens to some of the arguments advanced against Civil Service Reform.  One of these arguments, a favorite with machine politicians, takes the form of an appeal to “party loyalty” in filling minor offices.  Why, again and again these very same machine politicians take just as good care of henchmen of the opposite party as of those of their own party.  In the underworld of politics the closest ties are sometimes those which knit together the active professional workers of opposite political parties.  A friend of mine in the New York Legislature—­the hero of the alpha and omega incident—­once remarked to me:  “When you have been in public life a little longer, Mr. Roosevelt, you will understand that there are no politics in politics.”  In the politics to which he was referring this remark could be taken literally.

Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me, at about the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tammany man named Costigan, a good fellow according to his lights.  I had been speaking to him of a fight in one of the New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, moreover, was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions.  It had been an interesting fight in more than one way.  For instance, the Republican party, at the general election, polled something like five hundred and fifty votes, and yet at the primary the two factions polled seven hundred and twenty-five all told.  The sum of the parts was thus considerably greater than the whole.  There had been other little details that made the contest worthy of note.  The hall in which the primary was held had been hired by the Stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman.  To him the Half-Breeds applied to know whether they could not hire the hall away from their opponents, and offered him a substantial money advance.  The conscientious gentleman replied that his word was as good as his bond, that he had hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and that it must be theirs.  But he added that he was willing to hire the doorway to the Half-Breeds if they paid him the additional sum of money they had mentioned.  The bargain was struck, and the meeting of the hostile hosts was spirited, when the men who had rented the doorway sought to bar the path of the men who had rented the hall.  I was asking my friend Costigan about the details of the struggle, as he seemed thoroughly acquainted with them, and he smiled good-naturedly over my surprise at there having been more votes cast than there were members of the party in the whole district.  Said I, “Mr. Costigan, you seem to have a great deal of knowledge about this; how did it happen?” To which he replied, “Come now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it’s the same gang that votes in all the primaries.”