On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what " lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill." His rival was a man of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in Ireland. He had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. The expedition, however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into New York politics instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I myself at one time occupied. He felt that his rival had gained too much glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him: "I would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting Latin on the floor of this House when you don't know the alpha and omayga of the language?" There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above mentioned, a man whom I will call Brogan. He looked like a serious elderly frog. I never heard him speak more than once. It was before the Legislature was organized, or had adopted any rules; and each day the only business was for the clerk to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the following dialogue occurred: Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k! The Clerk. York. The gentleman from New character and initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for the need of collective action. I shall never forget the men with whom I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts who helped us. We had made up our minds that we must not fight fire with fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in practical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in applied morality. It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially when it happened that on one side there were corrupt and unscrupulous demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous reactionaries. Our effort was to hold the scales even between both. We tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates were anything but righteous. We endeavored to cut out the abuses of property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding those abuses. We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper assaults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property themselves did things that were wicked and corrupt. We were as yet by no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to the need of controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of politics with big business. In this matter I was not behind the rest of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of them, for no serious leader in political life then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these questions. One partial reason-not an excuse or a justification, but a partial reason— for my slowness in grasping the importance of action in these matters was the corrupt and unattractive nature of so many of the men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even at that date I had neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money king, and I did not regard the "money touch," when divorced from other qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. As recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight battles, in which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and powerful financiers and financial interests of the day. But most of the fights in which we were engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and they were more apt to be against that form of corruption which found its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which defended or advocated privilege. DOING THE THING THAT IS NEXT To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government. A man who stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time, one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever the usefulness of any one has been exhausted it is to be thrown aside. If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when the time and the need come together, without asking what the future holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can do better. The next installment of Mr. Roosevelt's "Chapters of a Possible Autobiography A VAGRANT'S CREED BY MARTHA HASKELL CLARK To but accept the bitter with the sweet, To swing in place the chafing-buckled load, To greet with friendly hail each passing face, To know the rose-fringed road must wander too To prize the worth of one true-hearted friend To learn the price of joy more oft is told To know the heart of love, that bravely smiles To see within the dusk of each new night Heart-glad to say before your eyelids fall, BY JOHN ANSON FORD "T HE railroads, the caravans of the twentieth century, are taxing every energy and straining every nerve to meet these rigid and ever increasing demands. That they have succeeded no one questions. But success has its price, and a part of this price has been the scrap-iron and kindlingwood of costly equipment, the hopeless cripples of strong, promising manhood, and graves without number. We meet the demands, but we break, maim, kill, and pay. It is a record of children's tears and broken hearts. It is a record of disappointment and distress, pain and poverty; a record written in the ink of human blood; and that record, gentlemen, is in our handwriting. We cannot evade it, we cannot deny it, and the pity, the shame, is that every year for twenty years we have been writing a larger and a bloodier record. . . . Don't you think it high time for every one of you to bring this subject directly and personally home and consider it in its relation to your own safety and the welfare of those dependent on you?" Thus George Bradshaw, a former claim agent, in a recent speech to New York Central employees, interpreted the spirit of the Safety First Movement-an organized crusade against railway accidents which in two years has proved so successful that it has spread over forty-six railways of America. The safety-first idea is now in operation on 152,000 miles of track, more than three-fifths of the entire mileage in the United States. A few months ago the Vice-President of the Imperial Railway of Japan wrote to the first "preacher" of this crusade, R. C. Richards, of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, to learn the details of the movement, and has inaugurated it in the Sunrise Kingdom. This is not primarily a campaign of stockholders, presidents, or superintendents, but of engineers, firemen, conductors, switchmen, and section men, joining hands against a common peril-injury and death that come suddenly, as a thief in the night. This unique effort for the conservation of human life, which has as its chief feature the personal STOPPING THE CAR If this switchman's "brake-club" breaks, he may fall beneath the moving car. One safety committee has seen to it that all the "brake-clubs" onits division are strong enough to stand rigid tests |