Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 761 pages of information about Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography.

Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 761 pages of information about Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography.
to us, but if they had had any idea that you intended doing what you now say you will do, they would have subscribed it all to the other side, and more too.”  The State official in his turn answered that he was very sorry if any one had subscribed under a misapprehension, that it was no fault of his, for he had stated definitely and clearly his position, that he of course had no money wherewith himself to return what without his knowledge had been contributed, and that all he could say was that any man who had subscribed to his campaign fund under the impression that the receipt of the subscription would be a bar to the performance of public duty was sadly mistaken.

The control by Mr. Platt and his lieutenants over the organization was well-nigh complete.  There were splits among the bosses, and insurgent movements now and then, but the ordinary citizens had no control over the political machinery except in a very few districts.  There were, however, plenty of good men in politics, men who either came from districts where there was popular control, or who represented a genuine aspiration towards good citizenship on the part of some boss or group of bosses, or else who had been nominated frankly for reasons of expediency by bosses whose attitude towards good citizenship was at best one of Gallio-like indifference.  At the time when I was nominated for Governor, as later when Mr. Hughes was nominated and renominated for Governor, there was no possibility of securing the nomination unless the bosses permitted it.  In each case the bosses, the machine leaders, took a man for whom they did not care, because he was the only man with whom they could win.  In the case of Mr. Hughes there was of course also the fact of pressure from the National Administration.  But the bosses were never overcome in a fair fight, when they had made up their minds to fight, until the Saratoga Convention in 1910, when Mr. Stimson was nominated for Governor.

Senator Platt had the same inborn capacity for the kind of politics which he liked that many big Wall Street men have shown for not wholly dissimilar types of finance.  It was his chief interest, and he applied himself to it unremittingly.  He handled his private business successfully; but it was politics in which he was absorbed, and he concerned himself therewith every day in the year.  He had built up an excellent system of organization, and the necessary funds came from corporations and men of wealth who contributed as I have described above.  The majority of the men with a natural capacity for organization leadership of the type which has generally been prevalent in New York politics turned to Senator Platt as their natural chief and helped build up the organization, until under his leadership it became more powerful and in a position of greater control than any other Republican machine in the country, excepting in Pennsylvania.  The Democratic machines in some of the big cities, as in New York and Boston, and the country Democratic

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Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.