Roosevelt’s 1886 Bid for Mayor
THE NEW YORK MAYORAL CONTEST of 1886 reflected the continuing contrasts of a city split between wealthy financiers and the laboring poor. That brownstone-born Theodore Roosevelt ran against Henry George, a united labor candidate, exemplified the contrast.
Roosevelt returned to New York from the West only on October 8, as Henry George, recently nominated by the Central Labor Union (CLU), gave his first stump speech to a crowd of 2,000. Republicans and Democrats scrambled to find challengers to take on the labor candidate. Significantly, Roosevelt had just passed through Chicago on the very day the men convicted of the Haymarket bombing were sentenced to be hanged. The May 3 bombing, which left seven police officers dead, helped redraw the social and political landscape of 1886, as reflected by George’s candidacy and the frightened reaction of New Yorkers of both parties. Roosevelt would eventually lose the race, but he helped to unite city Republicans on the eve of the 1888 national election.
Roosevelt ran as a reforming Republican who pledged to clean up city government. For the first time, the former assemblyman addressed a citywide audience rather than just a safe Republican district. The mayoral race against George in a year of labor radicalism deepened Roosevelt’s understanding of the stark social and economic divisions in the city. Within a decade, Roosevelt would write to urban reformer Jacob Riis of the need for New York to have a “workingman’s mayor.” But Roosevelt was not quite there yet. When he used the term “yawning gulf” to describe the hopeless contest he faced, he might also have been talking about the gap between New York’s very rich and very poor.
Under the leadership of Terence Powderly, the Knights of Labor had grown tremendously in the mid-1880s and scored a number of successes. In 1884 and 1885, the national labor organization had achieved victories in the Union Pacific Railroad and Wabash Railroad strikes. By 1886, its membership had swelled to 700,000. In New York City, labor organized into the Central Labor Union, representing about 50,000 workers. This meant that even when small groups of poorly organized workers went on strike for shorter hours or increased pay, they received the backing of both the CLU and sympathetic working-class communities.
In March 1886, the streetcar drivers and conductors of the Dry Dock Line along Grand Street went on strike for reduced hours. The drivers regularly worked sixteen- and seventeen-hour days without time off for dinner. They asked to work only twelve hours a day. When policemen escorted scab workers to operate the streetcars, neighborhood crowds blocked the tracks with barricades of garbage. The police chief responded by sending 750 men, a quarter of his force, to protect the streetcars as they inched across Lower Manhattan through hostile crowds. Policemen clubbed rioters as angry mobs overturned and set fire to the cars. The CLU called for a sympathy strike on every streetcar line, and 16,000 drivers, conductors, and stablemen answered the call. New York City traffic came to a standstill until the Dry Dock Company gave in to its employees’ demands.
Theodore Roosevelt missed the strike and the ensuing riots, as he was in residence at his Dakota ranch. While Roosevelt’s time in the West gained him numerous enriching experiences as a ranchman and hunter, he missed a crucial moment in New York history. By living away from the city for much of the time between the spring of 1884 and the fall of 1886, he missed the rise of labor militancy in New York. After the Chicago Haymarket bombing of May 3, Roosevelt wrote his sister Anna a fairly violent response with reference to his own cowboys. He noted that his men worked just as hard or harder than many of the strikers, and for little money. “But they are Americans through and through,” Roosevelt wrote. “I believe nothing would give them greater pleasure than a chance with their rifles at one of those mobs.” If only East could meet West in some showdown between cowboys and radical labor: “My men shoot well and fear very little,” he said. Although this statement could be interpreted as hostility to organized labor, in reality it reflected the way Roosevelt distinguished between orderly protest and riotous mobs. Nearly a decade later, when Roosevelt became police commissioner, he made that distinction clear. “We shall guard as zealously the rights of the striker as those of the employer,” Roosevelt said in a statement quoted by the Evening Post. “But when riot is menaced it is different. The mob takes its own chances. Order will be kept at whatever cost. If it comes to shooting we shall shoot to hit. No blank cartridges or firing over the head of anybody.” Violent disorder would not be tolerated.
Late nineteenth-century mob violence reflected a new reality of modern, urban America. Riots during the Revolutionary period had been communal activities directed against perceived wrongs. More recent riots, however, derived not from shared ideas, but from the very divisions facing a vastly growing, polyglot city confronted with sharp social and economic distinctions. One contemporary New York writer referred to this situation as the “volcano under the city.” In 1887, William Osborn Stoddard, onetime secretary to Abraham Lincoln, wrote, “They carry guns, pistols, axes, hatchets, crowbars, pitchforks, knives, bludgeons, the Red Flag. Much of their shouting is done in other Tongues, but the cry is in English: ‘Down with the rich men! Down with property! Down with the police!’” Stoddard called it “an insurrection of evil against law, an uprising of suppressed hellish forces against order.” His words reflected well much of the fear shared by New Yorkers in the late nineteenth century as they witnessed the rapid and massive changes to their city. Men such as Stoddard and Roosevelt worried about more than just damage to private property or higher taxes, a common complaint against upper-class New Yorkers, who were often regarded as being merely self-serving. They honestly worried that the next riot would rip the city asunder as a new civil war played itself out on the streets of New York.
Roosevelt’s own words revealed the changing times as well. In campaign speeches in 1884 and 1885, he spoke about civil service reform and the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South. By 1886, he was forced to address questions of labor. When a Henry George campaign club sent Roosevelt a letter labeling him part of “the employing and landlord class,” Roosevelt attacked its “reckless misstatements and crude and vicious theories.” In a letter Roosevelt noted that he owned no land except that on which he lived. “I have worked both with hands and with head,” he commented, “probably quite as hard as any member of your body. The only place where I employ many ‘wage-workers’ is on my ranch in the West.” He mocked the idea that one group of Americans was responsible for the economic conditions of another group. It was like saying they were responsible for some people being shorter, or more nearsighted. Roosevelt also took umbrage at the very use of the word “classes,” so much in vogue in American cities by 1886. “If you had any conception of the true American spirit,” Roosevelt lectured, “you would know we do not have ‘classes’ at all on this side of the water.” From George’s theories of wealth redistribution by means of a land tax, to the language of labor militancy, Roosevelt showed himself firmly on the conservative side of the debate.
As he had since the fall of 1884, Roosevelt made sure he was back in New York City by October and the start of the 1886 election season. With his secret engagement to Edith and his growing longing for his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Alice, Roosevelt had been actively looking for a way back into New York City life and politics. The opportunity came when Republicans asked him to run for mayor against Union Labor Party candidate Henry George and Democrat Abram Hewitt. “It is of course a perfectly hopeless contest,” Roosevelt wrote after receiving the Republican nomination on October 15, “the chance for success being so very small that it may be left out of account.”
If he knew he was going to lose, why did Roosevelt agree to run? The Republicans’ slim chances that year had already led Elihu Root to turn down the nomination. Certainly Roosevelt sought a more active role in the New York political scene after his time out west. Throughout 1884 and 1885, Roosevelt had attended district and state conventions, and by the spring of 1886 he was active in the city in a number of areas. He had been elected to the executive committee of the Civil Service Reform Association, and he was even on the Citizens’ Auxiliary Committee of the Grand Army of the Republic, making arrangements for Memorial Day. More importantly, even during his absence he had scored an important political victory, having been elected president of the Twenty-First District Association. It represented a final victory over Jake Hess, who was “put out to pasture” by being named a commissioner to the Board of Electrical Control.
Right from the beginning of the 1886 mayor’s race, Roosevelt understood that he was being asked to run as a sacrifice for the Republican Party. Moreover, he knew that at that point in his career, it was a sacrifice he had to make. The year 1884 had been not only a tragic one for Roosevelt personally, but also a disastrous one for him politically. After opposing Blaine as the party’s nominee, then opting to campaign for the party that fall, Roosevelt had succeeded in alienating both party leaders and independents, who bolted for Cleveland. The split Republican Party in New York that year had cost Blaine the election. Now, in 1886, New York party leaders sought a reform candidate who could stand as the nominee of a united Republican Party, thus healing the split of 1884. It was widely understood that any Republican nominee that year would be a “sacrifice candidate.” During the election campaign, Republican leaders would continually stress party unity with an eye toward the 1888 presidential election. The 1886 mayoral race allowed Roosevelt to return to the party’s good graces while campaigning on the reform issues that would mark his entire political career. In the end, Roosevelt lost the election, but it was a necessary defeat that reestablished him in the city and state from which he would launch his career. Moreover, the election continued to illustrate the kind of Republican Roosevelt was: both a loyal party man and a progressive reformer. This continued ability to bridge the great divide in the Republican Party would make Roosevelt a successful politician over the next quarter century.
Roosevelt attended the Republican County Convention held in the Grand Opera House on October 15. He would later say he attended simply because he was “curious” to see who the Republicans would choose to battle George and Hewitt. It seems just as likely that Roosevelt hoped to get the nomination himself, or at least to make sure party leaders knew he was back in town. Although he later expressed surprise that he was asked to run, this seems a bit disingenuous. After all, for many months he had been waiting for Mayor Grace to come through with an appointed position in city government. Moreover, Roosevelt had been writing to Lodge about his friend’s hand in writing the party platform for Massachusetts Republicans, as well as Lodge’s new attempt to win a seat in Congress. Roosevelt referred to this as Lodge’s “political reappearance.” No doubt Roosevelt’s own political reappearance was much on his mind. In Roosevelt, Republican Party leaders found a candidate who could unite the two wings of the party.
In 1886, power within the New York City Republican Party was divided between machine politicians such as Thomas Platt and wealthy “Swallowtail” Republicans such as Elihu Root. Republican reformers tended to stay aloof from the party machine, preferring instead to influence city politics through citizens’ committees and reform clubs. In 1886, Roosevelt received the backing of the district managers controlled by party boss Thomas Platt. This would be the first of many such reconciliations between Roosevelt and the party boss. Both men had already shown their common belief in party harmony. The former Republican boss, Roscoe Conkling, had overseen the state party machine at a time when the national party was riven by factions. Such divisions, Platt believed, only led to the party’s defeat. The Easy Boss valued party harmony as the key to electoral victory. Hence, Platt had seconded the nomination of Blaine in 1884, although Conkling was dead set against it. In backing the Republican nominee in 1884, Platt and Roosevelt had acted together to defeat the Democrats. Now, in 1886, they did so again.
Roosevelt also received backing from the reformers. He was nominated by a Citizens’ Committee of One Hundred that represented the reform wing of the party. Reformers were pleased at Roosevelt’s nomination, but surprised. The Nation, in an article on Roosevelt’s selection by the party bosses, asked, “How is it possible for him to think the ‘Johnnies’ and ‘Jakes’ and ‘Mikes’ sincere, when the investigations and reformatory legislation which he carried through were bitterly opposed and resisted by these very men?” Probably the party bosses were not sincere, but saw Roosevelt’s nomination as a mere convenience serving a larger purpose. Just as Roosevelt barely mentioned the mayoral race in his autobiography, Republican boss Platt made no mention of Roosevelt’s nomination in his own autobiography. For a man like Platt, such compromise with the reformers—leading to an election loss—was best forgotten.
In September, George had been overwhelmingly nominated at a trades union meeting that represented more than 40,000 workingmen. A black engineer named James Ferrol seconded the nomination, warning that if the people did not do their duty and vote for George, “shame be on their own heads for making their children slaves.” Labor enthusiasm aside, the story came down to numbers: if George could secure the workingman’s vote, he stood a chance at being elected. To answer his nomination, the Democrats had put forward Abram Hewitt, a popular and reforming former congressman whom Republicans could support with a clear conscience.
By the time Roosevelt officially accepted the nomination for mayor, only two weeks before the election, he had missed the momentum of the campaign. Reports of his nomination were overshadowed by a public debate between Hewitt and George that appeared in the city’s newspapers. Indeed, the two other candidates largely ignored Roosevelt’s candidacy, as did the city’s labor press. By the end of Roosevelt’s first week as a candidate, even the New York Herald, which supported Hewitt, had ignored Roosevelt, focusing instead on George as Hewitt’s main opponent. It was a rare moment in New York City history when the Republican nominee was essentially a third-party candidate. Perhaps accepting his inevitable defeat, Roosevelt contributed to his own marginalization by running a lackluster campaign. He avoided attacking either of his opponents, including George, who adhered to a radical philosophy, and did not try to attract voters from outside the party. Roosevelt understood his role as a reform Republican uniting the party, and he spoke solely to the party. This made for some rather dry reading, as reflected by his official letter of acceptance. In discussing municipal reform, Roosevelt wrote, “It is practically impossible for any member of the party now, and for so long past, dominant in our local affairs to work a real reform therein, for, no matter how good his aims, he would find himself at every step trammeled by a thousand personal and political ties.” It had all the sizzle of a good government pamphlet.
On October 20, Roosevelt addressed the Republican Club of the City of New York. Introducing Roosevelt as “a man of national reputation, noted for his independence and aggressiveness,” Elihu Root seemed more concerned with the Republican organization than with the candidate, remarking that the meeting of the club represented the “grand spirit of organized Republicanism.” “It makes a difference,” he declared, “between the breaking up of the party and the building up of the party.” Roosevelt, characteristically for this campaign, spoke briefly, noting his Assembly career and the need to register Republicans to vote. He barely mentioned George and Hewitt, leaving it to others, such as Root, to attack the George movement and the Democratic machine. The following day, the Republican Union League endorsed Roosevelt, with Joseph Choate calling him “the one man . . . who will reform our municipal government.” Over the next several days, the same themes of a united Republican Party backing a reform candidate were repeated throughout the city and in newspapers that supported Roosevelt.
Roosevelt himself stressed the importance of his candidacy in fostering party unity. Speaking to the executive committee of his party, Roosevelt stated his belief, said the Tribune, that “whatever the result of the election might be, he was satisfied that the party would be more firmly unified for the active work of the present campaign.” Expressing public doubt about the outcome of an election is usually suicidal for any candidate. But Roosevelt expressed such doubts privately to his friends. To longtime friend Frances Theodora Dana, author of botanical books for children, Roosevelt predicted his overwhelming defeat. “The simple fact is that I had to play Curtius and leap into the gulf that was yawning before the Republican party,” Roosevelt wrote. “Had the chances been better I would probably not have been asked.” Curtius was the Roman youth who, according to myth, rode his horse into a chasm that appeared in the middle of Rome, thus saving the city. Roosevelt saw himself in the same vein—as helping to end the divide in the Republican Party, and sacrificing himself in the process.
Still, reform Republicans had long memories. They remembered that Roosevelt had backed Blaine in 1884, and now he was being backed by Platt and the machine. Whose side was Roosevelt on? The Evening Post described Roosevelt as a “straw man” put up by the machine. In The Nation, Godkin echoed the Post: Roosevelt was merely selected by “a corrupt clique of Republican machine politicians so they could secure concessions from Tammany by seeing that Roosevelt does not run too well.” Later, Godkin worried that the vote for Roosevelt would “bring the Anarchists and Socialists and Strikers . . . within 10,000 or 20,000 of full possession of the city government.” Even Hewitt picked up on this theme. “He is a bright young man,” the Democratic nominee said in a speech at Cooper Union. “But he has made a mistake. He has allowed himself to be made the tool of designing men.” As a result, he might open the election to Henry George. If this occurred, “Mr. Roosevelt would lament in sackcloth and ashes, and ask for forgiveness of his fellow citizens for the calamity he had helped to bring about.” That Roosevelt was young and ambitious, no one could deny. For many, this combination seemed to translate into a candidate who compromised his ideals and was open to manipulation.
Roosevelt had to perform a sensitive balancing act. He had to claim, on the one hand, that his candidacy represented a united Republican Party, while, on the other, asserting his independence from any boss or faction. Roosevelt began an October 25 speech to New York dry-goods merchants by affirming his dedication to beating his opponents and the possibility that he could still do so. By this late date, with so many in the press and in his own party having written him off, Roosevelt had to argue for the continued relevancy of his candidacy. “I don’t think any one who knows me will say that I am not in this race to beat George,” Roosevelt declared. “I’m in to beat both him and Mr. Hewitt.” Then Roosevelt urged that people “not lose sight of the greater issue,” as “there are municipal reforms to be effected,” and Hewitt would be hampered by his obligation to Tammany Hall. “If elected,” Roosevelt said, “I shall go to the City Hall unpledged to any one.” The same day he spoke to the dry-goods men, Roosevelt penned a letter to one of his supporters, Charles Miller, who had echoed the concerns of the Post. Did Roosevelt stand by his 1884 decision to back Blaine? Roosevelt replied that not only did he stand by it, he would do so again even if it meant losing the current election. The Times published both Miller’s letter and Roosevelt’s reply. Two years later, Roosevelt was still fighting the battles of 1884.
Other prominent Republicans openly bolted the party for Hewitt that fall. On October 26, top New York independent Republican Carl Schurz wrote Hewitt saying, “A good many of my acquaintances are hesitating as to whether to vote for you or for Mr. Roosevelt.” Schurz worried that what Roosevelt claimed was true—that Tammany’s support of Hewitt would come at the price of the Democratic machine’s power over mayoral appointments. Roosevelt’s own Assembly investigating committee in 1884 had exposed the quid pro quo between Tammany boss John Kelly and Mayor Frank Edson. Schurz asked Hewitt whether he had made any promises to Tammany for its backing. When Hewitt replied that he had made no pledges to Tammany concerning appointments, that was good enough for Schurz, who was not only a leading Republican, but also one of the most prominent German Americans in New York—and German Americans usually voted Republican. That same week, Schurz addressed a large meeting of German Americans in Cooper Union and urged the election of Hewitt. Roosevelt he referred to as “an excellent gentleman who had done excellent work in the Legislature and had a splendid record.” But, in the end, Schurz saw Hewitt as a “man of experience, and a statesman as well as a politician” who could poll more votes than Roosevelt. This would not be the last time fellow reforming Republicans looked askance at Roosevelt’s cooperation with the machine.
The climax of Roosevelt’s campaign came on October 27, his twenty-eighth birthday, at a large meeting of Republicans at Cooper Union Hall. Drawing on comments that Mayor Grace had made in supporting Hewitt, Roosevelt referred to himself as a “radical reformer” and promised to clean up city government. Yet, in addition to underscoring his reforming tendencies, Roosevelt made plain that he was, in his words, “a strong party man.” As had happened at other large Republican meetings during the campaign, someone called out “Three Cheers for James G. Blaine!” Only the day before, at a meeting of Ninth District Republicans, the cry had been answered by cheers that shook the building. The mention of Blaine, who was still seen as a possible presidential candidate in 1888, was a double-edged sword for Roosevelt. On the one hand, it reminded party regulars of Roosevelt’s divisive actions during the 1884 Republican National Convention. On the other hand, it reminded independents that Roosevelt, both in 1884 and in the current campaign, had opted for the party machine. The New York Herald sought to exploit the latter sentiment, frequently declaring that Roosevelt was the “Blaine candidate for mayor,” or that “the republican vote is not to be a vote for New York, but a vote for Blaine.” For his part, Roosevelt avoided referring to 1884.
Despite the optimistic headlines of the Times (“Roosevelt’s Great Army,” “Flocking to Roosevelt”) and Elihu Root’s assertion that Roosevelt might attract as many as 100,000 votes, Election Day saw the Republican candidate cross the finish line in a distant third place, with only about 60,000 votes. Hewitt was the victor. Roosevelt seems to have taken the loss in stride. He took great delight in the fact that Lodge had won a seat in Congress, and he busied himself with his travel plans to England for his coming nuptials. The day before the election, Roosevelt seemed more concerned with wishing Lodge luck, and then finally telling his closest friend of his engagement. Roosevelt said there had been little chance of his election, placing the blame on independents who would vote for Hewitt. This was the common understanding of the election results: that Roosevelt in 1886 was being punished in the same way Lodge had been punished by Massachusetts independents in 1884, when he had lost his first bid for Congress. Roosevelt’s friend Joseph Bucklin Bishop would later write that Roosevelt lost the election because independent Republicans were “unable to forgive Roosevelt for his advocacy of Blaine” in 1884.
True, many independents must have voted for Hewitt, yet Roosevelt and other observers probably overstated their defection in 1886. In fact, many regular Republicans stampeded to Hewitt in order to avoid a George victory—the potential “calamity” Hewitt had mentioned. Samuel Gompers, who had led Assemblyman Roosevelt on a tour of the tenements, was active in the George campaign. In his autobiography, he recalled the rumor that Republican headquarters had actually instructed party members to vote for Hewitt in order to ensure George’s defeat. Although this seems a ludicrous rumor, Gompers was inclined to believe it. Decades later, a contemporary of Roosevelt’s, the critic Brander Matthews, recalled being as much afraid of Roosevelt’s youth and impetuosity as George’s advocacy of a land tax. “I do not believe that we, the aristocracy of New York,” Matthews told interviewer J. F. French in 1922, “were really any more afraid of Henry George with his radical doctrines than we were of Roosevelt’s youth and radical opinions. Hence, many Republicans voted for Hewitt.” What these “radical opinions” were, Matthews did not say, and he may have been referring more to Roosevelt’s later ideas, as expressed in his New Nationalism, than to anything he said in the campaign of 1886. Finally, other Republicans, especially businessmen, were so afraid of George’s ideas that many were angry with the Republican bosses for putting up a candidate at all, and not throwing in their lot with Hewitt to defeat George outright. After the election, New York journals agreed. The New York Tribune said it was “evident at a glance” that Roosevelt had been knifed in the back by the Republican machine and deserted by members of his own party. The Nation believed that the wealthy uptown districts had abandoned Roosevelt, and that he had failed “to command the support of the most intelligent element of his own party.” Not just independents, but thousands of regular Republicans, had bolted to Hewitt to defeat George.
Still, despite his third-place finish, Roosevelt could take some pride in the outcome of the race. Previous mayoral elections in New York had shown that in a three-way contest involving a reforming Democrat, the Republican candidate stood little chance of winning. In 1886, Roosevelt won 16,000 fewer votes than Republican Alan Campbell had in 1882 in a two-way contest against Democrat Franklin Edson, a midterm election marked by low voter turnout. Yet Roosevelt won 16,000 more votes than Republican Frederick Gibbs had in 1884 in a three-way contest with Tammany candidate Hugh Grant and independent William Grace. In a state or federal election, those 16,000 votes were crucial in New York, a state that had swung to the Democrats in 1884 by fewer than 1,200 votes. With only one statewide contest in New York that year, the city’s 1886 mayoral race took on extra importance as an indication of Republican voting for 1888. By running as the Republican candidate endorsed by both machine bosses and independent reformers, Roosevelt did much to ensure the election of a Republican president only two years later.
While privately blaming the same independent Republicans who had turned against him and Lodge in 1884, Roosevelt publicly characterized his defeat in the same terms as he had when he accepted the nomination—as a Curtius-like sacrifice for party unity. He even gave an interview to this effect on the very night of his defeat, calling his candidacy “the means of holding the Republican party in the city together.” Here, again, Roosevelt underscored the real significance of his failed candidacy. He had been defeated in a greater cause, that of reuniting the Republican factions behind a single candidate. Moreover, he had campaigned as both a loyal party man and a reformer promising to clean up municipal politics. Appealing to both machine and independent Republicans in this way contributed to Roosevelt’s later political success, both as Republican nominee for governor in 1898 and as vice presidential nominee in 1900. In fact, the 1886 campaign can be seen as a microcosm of Roosevelt’s career. As he had in 1884, Roosevelt opted to work with the party bosses as the only way to be effective. This led to Mugwump skepticism, as displayed by the attacks of Godkin, the Post, and The Nation. Even that old Republican Carl Schurz endorsed Hewitt. Being abandoned by reformers in his own party infuriated Roosevelt. He complained to Lodge that they had acted with “unscrupulous meanness and a low, partisan dishonesty and untruthfulness which would disgrace the veriest machine heelers.” Roosevelt would have ample opportunity to repeat such complaints in the years to come.
Aside from his own election defeat, Lodge’s victory, and his coming December 2 marriage to Edith in London, money was on Roosevelt’s mind. He had put $600 into his mayoral campaign, and the Roosevelt uncles had contributed another $1,400. With half his net worth tied up in his Dakota ranch and owing a pile of debt on Sagamore Hill, he could hardly afford even this small sum. Even during his European honeymoon, as the newlyweds traveled first class across the continent, Roosevelt worried about money. He wrote to his brother-in-law Douglas Robinson, Corinne’s husband, asking him to sell his favorite horse, noting, “If I stay east I must cut down tremendously along the whole line.” He even contemplated giving up his New York residence, doubting his political future in the city and complaining of the city’s high personal tax. He would make the same calculation while residing in Washington, DC, a few years hence.
Worse was yet to come. Roosevelt expressed his financial concerns even before the terrible winter of 1886–1887 ripped into the Plains, killing half the cattle in Montana and the Dakotas. Only in February did eastern papers start carrying the terrible news from the West. “Cattle Dying for Want of Food,” came one report from Bismarck. “Stockment Say Fifty Per Cent. Have Been Lost,” roared another headline in the Times. The losses helped Roosevelt make up his mind: opting for the East, he put the ranches up for sale. But he was finally able to sell them only in 1898 at a further tremendous loss.
Income from his investments and royalties from his books were not enough. What Roosevelt needed was a regular paying job, and he looked ahead to the presidential election of 1888 to help him secure it. If he could continue to serve his party by campaigning for the successful Republican candidate, Roosevelt could count on an appointed government position, perhaps even in Washington, DC. For a prominent civil service reformer, Roosevelt found himself in an awkward position: depending for his livelihood on the very spoils system he opposed.