Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner
FOR NEW YORK CIVIL SERVICE reformers such as Theodore Roosevelt, the city police had long been the prime example of corrupt public officials. For those religiously minded, graft aided and abetted a sinister array of evils, from drinking to gambling and prostitution. The 29th Street police station was ground zero as it oversaw the center of New York’s nightlife. Around the station blazed thousands of electric lights. Enormous signs heralded the city’s grandest hotels, theaters, and dance halls. The patrons of such entertainment were served by an array of gambling houses and bordellos. Before Captain Alexander “Clubber” Williams transferred to the precinct, he had been stationed downtown, where he had little to do, and little opportunity to take bribes. “The pickings were lean” there, Henry Collins Brown recalled in his book New York in the Elegant Eighties, meaning that Williams had less opportunity to take graft downtown. When he received his promotion to inspector and his transfer uptown, Williams remarked, “Ah! No more chuck steak for me; now I’ll get a little of the Tenderloin.” By the middle of the 1880s, New York’s Tenderloin District had become notorious. By one estimate, half of the businesses in “Satan’s Circus” were connected with vice. It became the target of temperance advocates and every kind of social reformer. As New York’s Finest openly accommodated the vice trade, lining their pockets in the process, other reformers focused on police reform. They faced an enormous task.
Appointments to the police department were based on political connections, not qualifications. Once one received a badge, there was little oversight. Aside from graft, abuse of civilians was common. Clubber Williams received his moniker because of his dexterity with his patrolman’s club. Nighttime meant heavier weaponry. “The night stick was a miniature baseball bat,” Brown remembered, “far longer and heavier than the ‘billy’ or club attached to every policeman’s belt in the day time.” Without whistles as standard issue, policemen summoned help by beating the club on the sidewalk. “The police courts were filled with cases against policemen who clubbed peaceable citizens,” Brown wrote. He also remembered that policemen had yet to be trained in the arts of politeness. “If you told the old time policeman that he should say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to a mere citizen,” Brown recalled, “he would have torn off his badge, thrown it in your face and resigned forthwith from what he would have inferred was a bible class.” The 4,000 police officers on New York’s streets in the 1880s had, at best, a tense relationship with its citizens.
For Theodore Roosevelt and other good-government advocates, the answer lay with civil service reform. Policemen should be hired and fired, and promoted and disciplined, based on merit rather than political influence. And if the police force could be cleaned up, this would pave the way toward cleaning the city of its numerous illegal ventures. Civil service reform always remained a cornerstone of Roosevelt’s political ideology. While in the state Assembly, he had worked to create a bill making New York the first state to have a merit-based civil service. He had also helped usher in a bill that would establish such a system for the state’s largest cities. Roosevelt joined the civil service reform organizations and maintained close contact with other advocates. By the mid-1880s, civil service reformers were heartened by the implementation of the 1883 Pendleton Act, which created a national Civil Service Commission in Washington, DC, to oversee about one-quarter of federal jobs. Even while out of political office after 1884, Roosevelt continued to preach the gospel of reform. By early 1887, Roosevelt the Republican politician was dedicated to two related goals: defeating President Grover Cleveland and the Democrats in 1888, and furthering the cause of civil service reform. He was about to play an active and successful role in both.
THEODORE AND EDITH ROOSEVELT returned to New York from their lengthy European honeymoon in March 1887. For most of their trip through London and the great cities of Italy, they had not been entirely alone. Soon after their December 2 wedding, Edith had become pregnant with the first of the five children she and Theodore would have together. But what of little Alice? She was now a full three years old, had seen her father only sporadically her entire life, had never known her own mother, and was about to meet her “new” mother. Indeed, her Aunt Bamie was the closest thing she had to a mother, and really the only full-time guardian of any kind that she had known. It was this very question that led to perhaps the first serious disagreement in the new marriage. Thinking he was being sensitive to all three women—Edith, his sister Anna, and little Alice—Theodore assured Anna that Alice would remain in her care. Edith would have none of it. She insisted that Alice was now her child and would reside with her and her father and new sibling at Sagamore Hill. Anna was sent south for a short vacation while Roosevelt headed west to investigate the condition of his ranch. In leaving New York, he left behind one settled conflict only to face another enormous problem.
The winter of 1886–1887 had devastated western agriculture. In the Dakota Territory, farmers and cattlemen were ruined. For Roosevelt, it was the beginning of the end of his western experiment. “I am bluer than indigo about the cattle,” Roosevelt wrote Anna. “It is even worse than I feared.” He wrote that he expected to lose at least half of his initial investment of $80,000, but he knew it was the end: “I am planning how to get out of it,” he said. To Lodge, too, he showed he was in the process of turning his face firmly back toward New York. “The losses are crippling,” he wrote. “For the first time I have been utterly unable to enjoy a visit to my ranch. I shall be glad to get home.” Significantly, Roosevelt used the word “visit” for his stays on his ranch, while referring to New York as “home.” One assumes that his absence from Edith and Alice added to his homesickness. Returning east and supporting a family meant reviving his political career, especially on the eve of the 1888 presidential election. Whether living at Oyster Bay or not, for Roosevelt New York was the place to start. New York would oblige.
That April, Republicans of Roosevelt’s own Twenty-First Assembly District had banded together to form a new social club of politically like-minded young men. In his November 1886 Century article, Roosevelt had underscored the role that socializing played in politics. Now he and his friends had set out to create exactly what Roosevelt had discussed, “a social club of young men of the same political faith,” as the Times said. The very name “Federal Club” echoed the more established and influential “Union League.”
Upon his return, in May Roosevelt was feted at Delmonico’s by the new Federal Club. It was almost as if New York Republicans had come out to celebrate Roosevelt’s return to the city and to New York politics. Although only 60 to 80 people had been expected, the number quickly swelled to 150. The list of names was a “Who’s Who” of city Republicans, including top New York Republicans Chauncey Depew and Levi Morton, for whom Morton Hall was named, and leading New York City lawyers Joseph Choate and Elihu Root. There was a senator-elect, a former assistant secretary of the treasury, future mayor William Strong, several aldermen, representatives of both the New York and Brooklyn Republican committees, and B. F. Jones of the Republican National Committee. Even Henry Cabot Lodge came down from Massachusetts to support his friend. That the Federal Club chose Roosevelt as its first guest of honor, having incorporated only the month before, reflected his standing in the city. Allowing himself to be a sacrifice candidate in 1886 had been a shrewd political move. The ghost of 1884 had been exorcised.
On the night of the banquet, according to a reporter from the Times, the tables at Delmonico’s “literally groaned beneath the weight of the good things on them.” It was probably a good thing for Roosevelt that the wine had been flowing freely before he spoke to the gathering, for the speech was not his best. He was supposed to talk about “The Republican Party: Its Professions and Practices.” Instead, he gave a vague address that discussed the outside threats to the party—prohibitionists, labor, and independents—more than the Republican Party itself. Rather than touch on the specifics of what the party stood for, he averred only that in the past few years, “the cause of right was supported by a majority of our party, [and] the cause of wrong was championed by the majority of our foes.” Only a few weeks before, he had observed that Lodge was right to begin the campaign of 1888 early. But Lodge, sitting at Roosevelt’s table, could not have been pleased with Roosevelt’s own opening shot of the campaign. Roosevelt finished by looking at the Cleveland administration. Again, though, rather than pointing to any specific faults of Democratic government, he referred to “a distinct falling off from what it was during Republican rule.” While Delmonico’s offered its patrons strong drink, Roosevelt offered his audience a very watery brew.
The year 1887 ended with two events that greatly affected Roosevelt’s life, political career, and eventual legacy as president of the United States. The first event resulted from his autumn western hunting trip. Over the previous few years, Roosevelt had noticed the increasing scarcity of native wildlife, from small animals, such as beavers, to the large bison. Upon returning to New York, he had joined with other wealthy outdoors enthusiasts to form the Boone and Crockett Club. With Roosevelt as its first president, the club sought to work for the preservation of large game and of forest regions. Within only a few years, the club would score a number of triumphs, helping to found the National Zoo in Washington and aiding the passage of the 1894 Park Protection Act that saved Yellowstone National Park. All this was achieved years before Roosevelt became president, and it clearly marked the beginning of his preservation efforts, one of his greatest legacies as president. Significantly, these actions were not taken on his ranch, surrounded by cowboys. The first organizing meeting of the Boone and Crockett Club took place at the fashionable Roosevelt home at 689 Madison Avenue—which served as Theodore and Edith’s New York City residence, although it was owned by his sister Anna. It was because they were city dwellers that Roosevelt and his New York friends took steps to preserve America’s flora and fauna treasures. Western forests and plains served as important symbols for urbanites, antidotes to industrializing and urbanizing America. Moreover, few westerners had the pull to influence government policy that New Yorkers had. Roosevelt and his ilk had the power and prestige to lobby congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and presidents.
The second event helped Roosevelt secure the position he would hold in Washington for the next six years. With reformers giving Cleveland fairly high marks on civil service, that issue would likely not affect the upcoming presidential contest. Cleveland himself provided another issue in his State of the Union Address in December 1887. He dedicated his entire speech to that third rail of nineteenth-century politics, tariff reform. Republicans and many northern Democrats had long favored a high tariff to protect American industry. By the mid-1880s, however, the tariff was bringing in so much revenue that the federal government was running a surplus. Cleveland and most Democrats thought it unjust to needlessly raise consumer prices. In his speech, the president declared the national tariff to be too high, calling on Congress to initiate steep reductions. Cleveland’s speech galvanized Republicans, who began immediately preparing for the 1888 election. In January, Roosevelt presented to the Union League Club a report that affirmed the Republican Party’s commitment to the tariff. In March, he corresponded with Louis Theodore Michener, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party and Benjamin Harrison’s political manager. Without firmly committing himself, Roosevelt shrewdly expressed his inclination to support Harrison for the presidential nomination. Blaine was refusing to be nominated. Harrison, a former general, was the favorite son of a battleground state. He had been a US senator from 1881 to 1887, but had been defeated by a Democrat, David Turpie, in the previous election. He was also the grandson of William Henry Harrison, who had been president briefly in 1841 before dying of pneumonia. Cleveland had effectively split the Democratic Party over the tariff issue, a blunder he would repeat several years later on the issue of the gold standard. Meanwhile, Republicans were closing ranks after their near-miss with Blaine four years before. Roosevelt’s 1886 mayoral campaign had served this purpose, uniting New York Republicans while resuscitating his own political career in the city. In an important election year, Roosevelt’s name once again had great worth for the party.
That fall of 1888, Roosevelt was tapped to give campaign speeches not only in New York, but also in Harrison’s Indiana. New York campaign managers reluctantly gave up Roosevelt for additional stints in Minnesota and Michigan, the latter having gone to Blaine in 1884 by a mere 3,300 votes. While he was campaigning for Harrison, there came another sign that Roosevelt had revived himself politically in New York. As city Republicans looked for a candidate to challenge Abram Hewitt in the fall mayoral election, Roosevelt’s name sparked great interest. After all, it was noted, he had polled quite well in 1886, notwithstanding the stampede of Republicans to the Democrats in their fear of Henry George. Two years after Roosevelt’s defeat, here was further evidence that he had served the Republican Party’s interests well. In the end, Roosevelt was not nominated, and the eventual Republican challenger to Hewitt, Joel Erhardt, suffered a large defeat. Roosevelt, however, had already done his work in uniting the party in 1886. Republicans had lost both Indiana and New York in 1884. Now they had placed an Indianan on the ticket to win back that state—and old Levi Morton from New York as Harrison’s running mate. Meanwhile, Roosevelt’s own actions in 1886 and 1888 did much to ensure that New York slid back into the Republican column.
Election Day gave Harrison a solid electoral victory, although he lost the popular vote to Cleveland by 100,000 votes. Republicans also gained control of both the House and the Senate. In Washington, Harrison tapped for secretary of state James Blaine, who had resigned that post soon after Garfield’s death in 1881. In Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge had been easily reelected to Congress. Defeated New York City mayoral candidate Erhardt was rewarded with that perennial plum position: collector of the New York Custom House.
In March 1889, Blaine wrote to Lodge’s wife, Nannie, asking, “Do you happen to know a young gentleman—gentleman strongly accented—not over forty-five, well educated, speaking French well, preferably German also (with an accomplished wife thoroughly accustomed to society) and able to spend ten to fifteen thousand—twenty still better, beyond the salary he might receive?” Blaine was looking for an assistant secretary of state, whose duties would include throwing lavish parties for Washington’s diplomatic corps. For the Lodges, their close friend Theodore Roosevelt matched the description almost exactly. True, the Roosevelts would probably have some difficulty matching the extra expenses needed for socializing in Washington, especially as the salary for the post was only $4,500. But Roosevelt had shown he was a loyal Republican, and they felt he deserved some recognition for his work during the previous fall’s campaign.
Communicating with Blaine through Nannie, Lodge pressed his friend’s claim, but to no avail. Blaine remembered the convention of 1884, and his wafer-thin loss of New York. Had it not been for Theodore Roosevelt, Blaine might have been just beginning his second term as president. To the Lodges, Blaine was blunt: “My real trouble in regard to Mr. Roosevelt is that I fear he lacks the repose and the patient endurance required in an Assistant Secretary. Mr. Roosevelt is amazingly quick in apprehension. Is there not danger that he might be too quick in execution?” Blaine indicated that he would be home in Maine much of the time, leaving his assistant in charge of America’s foreign affairs. Did the Lodges really think Roosevelt had the temperament for the job? “I do somehow fear that my sleep at Augusta or Bar Harbor would not be quite so easy and refreshing if so brilliant and aggressive a man had hold of the helm. Matters are constantly occurring which require the most thoughtful concentration and the most stubborn inaction. Do you think that Mr. T. R.’s temperament would give guaranty of that course?” Possibly Blaine was right, at least that Roosevelt, having only just turned thirty in October, was incapable of “stubborn inaction.” But Blaine had secured a small bit of revenge for 1884.
Lodge continued to advocate for a place for Roosevelt in Washington, visiting the White House and soliciting the support of House Speaker Thomas Reed. The value of Lodge’s friendship to Roosevelt at this point in their respective careers cannot be overestimated. Here was Lodge, eight years Roosevelt’s senior, firmly established in Massachusetts politics and Washington’s upper circles, and just reelected to Congress, pressing the case of the younger Roosevelt, whose entire political career consisted of just three years in the state legislature and a failed mayoral bid. By early 1889, Lodge’s star was clearly on an upward trajectory, whereas Roosevelt’s future was decidedly uncertain.
In March and April, Roosevelt was unhappy with Harrison’s appointment of Republican machine men to key New York posts. The villain was Conkling’s successor as party boss, Thomas Platt. In helping to deliver New York to Harrison, Platt had expected to be named secretary of the treasury, an appointment that never materialized. Instead he kept firm control of state patronage, much to Roosevelt’s chagrin. Roosevelt, writing to Lodge about the situation, suggested one possible antidote to the spreading “Platt machine” in New York: “I do hope the President will appoint good civil service commissioners,” Roosevelt wrote. Roosevelt’s letter gave Lodge the idea of suggesting Roosevelt for the post. Probably that was Roosevelt’s intention all along.
And so Roosevelt was named one of three United States civil service commissioners. It was a mixed blessing. This had little to do with the fact that the Civil Service Commission oversaw only about 28,000 of the 140,000 federal jobs, or that the commission had only the power to investigate, and not prosecute, any malfeasance. Roosevelt had been closely identified with civil service reform, and had gone after patronage and corruption in New York while serving in the state assembly. No doubt his fellow civil service reformers, such as Lodge, rejoiced at his appointment. But it was an appointed, not an elected, position, and indeed, was the first of a succession of appointed jobs he served in until his election as governor in 1898. In other words, Roosevelt would win no election, and hold no elected office, for fifteen long years during the prime of his life. Moreover, as commissioner, he would be investigating government officials of his own party, loyal Republicans who in some cases had been appointed by the president himself. For any young man with political ambitions, this was not a healthy place to be. Would serving as civil service commissioner really lead to a seat in the New York State Senate, or next to Lodge in the US House of Representatives? Or was the new job a foreshadowing of Roosevelt’s future: a series of appointed positions while spending his free time writing books? There was even another, darker, and more ironic way of looking at his situation: Was Roosevelt’s livelihood about to become dependent upon the very system of party patronage that he fought against?
Until he became president, Roosevelt’s six years as civil service commissioner would constitute his longest tenure in any job. His time in Washington would provide him with significant experience, however. While in the capital, he became intimate with some of the most important figures in Washington political and social circles, men such as historian Henry Adams, descendant of the Adams presidents; old New York family friend John Hay; British diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice; German diplomat Hermann Speck von Sternburg; an old Harvard friend, Winthrop Chanler; Assistant Secretary of State William Wharton; naval intelligence officer Charles Henry Davis; and naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan. He solidified his friendship and political alliance with Henry Cabot Lodge. He sharpened his political and administrative skills, and he showed he could navigate Washington’s treacherous waters. Roosevelt even survived being the target of one of Washington’s favorite career-killers, the Congressional Investigating Committee. His walks frequently took him past the White House, and it was at this time, he later admitted, that he had his first thought of becoming president. During his time as civil service commissioner, he moved his family back and forth between Washington and New York, and two children born during this time—Kermit in 1889 and Ethel in 1891—were born at Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt continued to write, and he published, among other things, many western-themed books, such as The Winning of the West, American Big-Game Hunting, The Wilderness Hunter, and Hunting in the Bad Lands. Yet through all of his endeavors—family, writing, and work—ran the theme of New York. Even when he was in Washington, the city of his birth remained an important Roosevelt touchstone.
DARK SHADOWS HAD ALWAYS cast themselves across Roosevelt’s life. In his youth he had been small and sickly. By age twenty-five, Roosevelt had grieved the loss of the three people who were dearest to him: his father, his mother, and his first wife. Another shadow that loomed was the declining mental and physical health of his beloved brother Elliott. Born less than two years apart, as boys “Ellie” and “Teedie” had been constant companions. As they grew older their differences became apparent. Elliott was handsome, charming, and a born athlete. Theodore was the introverted naturalist who was destined for Harvard. All the Roosevelt children seemed to have been born with some illness, whether it was Anna’s spinal deformity or Theodore’s asthma. From a young age, Elliott had learned to control his periodic fits of convulsions with large quantities of alcohol. In 1880, when he took his brother west on a hunting trip just before Theodore married Alice, Roosevelt wrote home about Elliott’s drinking. “As soon as we got here he took some ale to get the dust out of his throat,” Roosevelt wrote his sister Corinne, trying to be funny. “Then a milkpunch because he was thirsty; a mint julep because it was so hot; a brandy smash ‘to keep the cold out of his stomach;’ and then sherry and bitters to give him an appetite.” At dinner, Roosevelt recounted, Elliott then imbibed “beer, later claret and in the evening shandigaff [sic],” the last better known as a shandy, or beer mixed with lemonade. Between the end of the hunt and bedtime, then, Elliott drank an unknown quantity of about eight different alcoholic beverages. He was only twenty years old at the time.
By the time Roosevelt left for Washington to become civil service commissioner, Elliott’s health was in steep decline. Roosevelt knew that Elliott’s alcoholic lifestyle contributed to his constant need for medical care, but he could do little but offer aid and compassion. During the summer of 1888, when Elliott was bedridden with simultaneous attacks of rheumatic gout, inflammatory rheumatism, and neck abscesses that prevented him from swallowing, Roosevelt expressed his displeasure at his younger brother’s debauched lifestyle at his own Oyster Bay estate, Hempstead. “I do hate his Hempstead life,” he wrote their sister. “I do’n’t [sic] know whether he could get along without the excitement now, but it is certainly very unhealthy, and it leads to nothing.” By July 1889, Roosevelt was begging Elliott to seek round-the-clock professional help at an institution of some kind, but to no avail. A complete breakdown later that year prompted a move with the family to Europe, where Elliott eventually checked himself into a fashionable German asylum. His wife, Anna, was pregnant with their third child; their first child, Anna Eleanor, who would later marry Franklin Delano Roosevelt and become First Lady, was then not quite five years old. Back in America, a servant girl named Katy Mann was also pregnant with Elliott’s baby. Armed with gifts and letters that Elliott had sent her, she wrote to Theodore Roosevelt for adequate compensation, well aware that Elliott’s brother was a prominent federal official. Elliott pleaded innocence, and Roosevelt wanted to believe his sick brother. Even if Elliott was the father, Roosevelt reasoned, clearly he had been drunk and out of his mind at the time. With one hand Roosevelt paid off Katy Mann, or asked his uncles to do so to save the Roosevelt name from disgrace. With the other hand he filed a writ of lunacy to strip Elliott of control of his finances.
On August 17, 1891, every major newspaper in New York reported Theodore Roosevelt’s move to have his brother declared insane. For the yellow press of the 1890s, this was a juicy story of insanity and back-stabbing within one of New York’s top families. The only thing that might have made the story more sensational was if the protagonists’ names were Astor or Vanderbilt rather than Roosevelt. Still, the tantalizing glimpse inside the old knickerbocker family must have made a million New Yorkers shudder with a kind of schadenfreude. Roosevelt’s aunts and uncles shuddered from rage and shame. “Elliott Roosevelt Insane” screamed one Times headline. Newspaper stories recounted word-for-word Roosevelt’s testimony before the court about his brother, including passages about Elliott’s drinking, his violent behavior, and his threats, on several occasions, to commit suicide. The writ humbled Elliott, and Roosevelt certainly used it as a tool with which to control his brother. It would only be lifted, Roosevelt carefully explained to Elliott in Paris, where he had moved with his new mistress, if Elliott returned to the United States and checked himself into another drying-out asylum for his alcoholism. Without much choice, Elliott obliged. Roosevelt even found his brother a job managing the Virginia estates of their brother-in-law Douglas Robinson. But he also cautioned the family that they had done all they could and must now stay aloof from Elliott’s problems.
Roosevelt understood that a lifetime of heavy drinking had taken a heavy physical toll on Elliott, one not easily reversed by simply taking “the cure.” Roosevelt’s father, mother, and first wife, Alice, had died at fairly young ages. Roosevelt was devastated, although perhaps not completely surprised, when his closest friend and playmate from childhood finally succumbed on August 14, 1894. Elliott was only thirty-four. For the third time in Roosevelt’s life, a telegram summoned him back to New York to be at the bedside of a dying family member. As on the day of his father’s death, however, Roosevelt did not make it in time; he missed the moment of Elliott’s death. He could only gaze down on his brother, who was seemingly transformed by death into a younger, more handsome man, like the one Roosevelt had known before alcohol had destroyed his body and mind. Bamie, their older sister, had been in England at the time of Elliott’s death, and their other sister, Corinne, wrote to her that Theodore wept like a child. Elliott was interred with his father, mother, and Theodore’s first wife, Alice Lee, out at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
FAMILY OBLIGATIONS KEPT Theodore Roosevelt returning to New York, but his job as civil service commissioner, beginning in 1889, also gave him ample opportunity to visit his hometown. The civil service reform movement had long targeted the New York Custom House as the corrupt repository of powerful politicians. Chester Arthur’s reputation certainly had not been aided by the fact that he had held the collectorship at the bequest of his party boss, Roscoe Conkling. When presidents tried to assert control over this richest and most powerful of patronage plums, they inevitably tangled with the Republican machine of New York. Rutherford Hayes had tried to oust Arthur and replace him with honest reformer Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Only months before the elder Roosevelt’s death, Harvard undergraduate Theodore Roosevelt had avidly read newspaper accounts of the sordid fight between Hayes and Conkling, with his own beloved father stuck in the middle. When Roosevelt Sr. failed to clear Conkling’s own committee, it was a bitter lesson for the young Roosevelt. Within only a few years, Roosevelt would be one of New York’s leading advocates of civil service reform and good government. Now, at age thirty, he was in a position to attack the spoils system in the custom house in a way that even a president could not.
Local bosses, hacks, and heelers were not about to let civil service laws stand in the way of their control over patronage. A set of examinations was introduced to standardize and remove patronage in applications to the federal civil service, including the New York Custom House. For machine politicians who still wanted to use the custom-house posts as political patronage, the solution was simple: either have someone more qualified than the actual candidate take the exam, or attain an advance copy of the questions. Roosevelt had taken up his new post in Washington in mid-May 1889, and within a week he was heading to downtown Manhattan to investigate charges of irregularity in the custom house brought by deputy naval officer John Comstock. He heard testimony and took the affidavits of two employees, Nathaniel Fowler and Thomas Jordan. Roosevelt collected a large amount of supporting documents, including job applications and examinations for admission and promotion. Based on this preliminary investigation, conducted solely by Roosevelt, the entire Civil Service Commission returned to the custom house on May 28 for a full hearing.
Roosevelt’s two fellow members on the commission were Charles Lyman and Hugh S. Thompson. Both men were older than Roosevelt and were veterans of the Civil War—Lyman from the North and Thompson from the South. Months before the attack on Fort Sumter, Thompson had led a battalion of Citadel students who had fired on a Union warship entering Charleston Harbor—the very first shots of the war. After the war, he served two terms as governor of South Carolina before being named assistant secretary of the treasury by President Cleveland in 1886. Thompson and Roosevelt were appointed by Harrison at the same time; Lyman had been appointed earlier by Cleveland. Lyman was an old civil service hand, having served as civil service examiner in the Treasury Department since 1872. Both were more than willing to give Roosevelt free rein in pursuing his investigations, although Lyman was nominally the commission’s president. While Roosevelt initially liked the two older men, he quickly grew impatient with them because they failed to match his level of activity and enthusiasm. But who could? By October, Roosevelt was complaining to Lodge that he could not trust Thompson in the work that needed to be done, while Lyman he characterized as “utterly useless.”
In May 1889, however, when Roosevelt brought the full commission to Manhattan, the commissioners were still enjoying their honeymoon. With reporters in attendance, Roosevelt took center stage on May 28 and read a preliminary report before examining witnesses. Roosevelt recounted the story of Thomas Jordan, who desired to acquire the questions before he sat for the civil service exam. As the same exam was given three days in a row—“in itself a very unfortunate state of things,” Roosevelt observed—another man, Nathaniel Fowler, sat at the back of the examining room copying the questions, which were later passed, along with the answers, to Jordan. The next day, Jordan took and passed the exam. As a reward, Fowler had been promised a place in the custom house, which required no examination. When no reward was forthcoming, Fowler took to showing up drunk at the custom house, demanding a position. Jordan and a custom-house employee who had helped in the scheme, Charles Terhune, pretended that they could get Fowler a night inspectorship job, but that it required taking the exam. Jordan and Terhune said they would give Fowler the questions and answers for the hefty sum of $50. “That’s a nice howdy-do,” Fowler told the commissioners. “Here I ain’t got 50 cents; I ain’t working, and they’re asking for $50.” Fowler offered to pay the money after he received the position, but Terhune replied, “No; got to have the dust. There are three or four in on this, and got to have the dust.” Since Fowler could not get “the dust”—the money—he decided to turn state’s evidence. Fowler, a Times reporter, noted, “was not a very favorable appearing specimen of young manhood.” But he was Roosevelt’s key witness against the other men.
Roosevelt also reported his findings in another case, that of custom-house employee Saul Hollander, having taken a close look at Hollander’s application and exam papers. The Times reporter observed that Hollander did not want to testify, “and his cringing was both pitiful and amusing.” Roosevelt pointed out to Hollander that not only did his handwriting greatly differ on his application and two examination papers, one for admission and one for promotion, but three completely different dates had been entered for his birthday. Even the year had changed: on one paper it was 1843, on the next 1840, and on the most recent, Hollander had suddenly become five years younger with a birth year of 1845. Hollander replied not by proclaiming his innocence, but by pleading his ignorance. “Gentlemen,” he said to the three commissioners, “I couldn’t get the date of my birth. No one knew when I was born except my mother, and she was an aged woman and she couldn’t tell me. She had forgotten. So I put it down as near as I could. Afterwards some of my friends told me when it was. I have got the day of the month right. It was May 10.” Someone reminded Hollander that although his friends had supposedly given him the correct date, he had not stuck to it on subsequent exam papers.
When the question of his changing handwriting was raised, Hollander claimed an injured arm. When Roosevelt asked Hollander to describe the room in which he had taken the examination, Hollander’s memory failed him. “I ought not to be asked to answer technicalities,” he protested. Commissioner Lyman, an old hand at civil service exams, asked Hollander to write an equation on a piece of paper. He was not asked to solve the equation, just to write down what Lyman said. But Hollander could not think of how to write a minus sign. The equation also included fractions and the multiplication symbol. “He has been studying those signs since I tested him the other day,” Roosevelt commented. The commissioners produced his examination for admission, in which all of the mathematical questions were answered correctly. “Read .0005,” said Commissioner Thompson, showing Hollander the exam paper. “Hollander looked at it as one might look at a Chinese letter print,” the Times reporter observed. In reply to Thompson, Hollander said, “Three oughts and a five.”
THOMPSON: “I know, but read it mathematically.”
HOLLANDER: “That’s what it is; ought, ought, ought, and five.”
THOMPSON: “Why no; it is five ten-thousandths.”
HOLLANDER: “That’s what I said.”
When Commissioner Lyman finally asked Hollander who had written the exam for him, Hollander replied, “Nobody.” He then broke down crying, saying he had a wife and family to support. The commissioners let him go. When he had left, Thompson observed, “That man is the biggest liar I ever saw.”
In the end, Hollander and Terhune were dismissed from their offices, and Terhune was indicted by a grand jury for violating the civil service law.
This was the first time Roosevelt had ever used such unsavory fellows as Jordan and Fowler as witnesses. In order to get their testimony, Roosevelt had been forced to make them promises. Even though Jordan had obtained his position fraudulently, Roosevelt worked to protect his job at the custom house. This meant asking Collector Erhardt—whom Abram Hewitt had defeated for mayor the previous fall—to keep Jordan on. In an 1890 letter to Erhardt, Roosevelt recalled the shady deal. After Jordan turned state’s evidence, Roosevelt recalled, “I had told him that so far as I could I would protect him against being turned out for testifying—he having been one of the beneficiaries of Terhune’s wrong doing—and on my representing the case to you you said he should not be molested in his then position.” By the time Roosevelt wrote to Erhardt, Jordan had been implicated in election fraud in Jersey City; Commissioner Roosevelt apparently penned the letter to Erhardt on the very same day he read about the charges in the newspapers. Roosevelt also wrote custom-house naval officer Comstock, who had initiated the proceedings the previous year. Since Comstock had been a witness to Roosevelt’s dealings with Jordan and Fowler, the civil service commissioner wanted to ascertain whether Comstock’s recollections matched his own. “Before making their statements they asked me, in substance, if I would not see that they were protected, or were not molested, for testifying, and I told them I would do what I could to protect them,” Roosevelt wrote in his letter. “As I recollect it, you were in the room, and within earshot, the whole time. Is that so? And is your recollection substantially as above?” Roosevelt was worried that his deal with Jordan and Fowler was about to be made public, and he was trying to line up witnesses who would back his version of events. Simply put, he was covering himself.
Roosevelt had reason for concern. Although he had been in the job only a short time, Roosevelt had already made many powerful enemies in Washington. After his investigation into the New York Custom House, he had tackled corruption under the local postmaster of Indianapolis, William Wallace. This was Roosevelt back in crusading form, mindless of the political consequences, as Indianapolis was President Harrison’s hometown, and Wallace was the president’s friend. Roosevelt’s investigation led to further dismissals and the humiliation of Wallace. Roosevelt could not hide his delight. “We had only a week’s trip but we stirred things up well,” he wrote Lodge. “The President has made a great mistake in appointing a well-meaning, weak old fellow in Indianapolis, but I think we have administered a galvanic shock that will re-inforce his virtue for the future.” Knowing Roosevelt better than just about anybody else, even the Massachusetts congressman must have shuddered at Roosevelt’s hubris in thinking a civil service commissioner could influence the president’s nominations. The Midwestern tour had then taken Roosevelt to Milwaukee, revealing more scoundrelism in the postmaster’s office there. Roosevelt’s actions were not making him many friends among Republican leaders, including the president. Moreover, Roosevelt, always careful to cultivate public opinion, made sure to leak his findings to the press. He also gave some frank interviews, something Lodge cautioned him strongly against. “Edith thoroughly agrees with you about the interviews,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge, “so I cry peccavi [“I have sinned”] and will assume a statesmanlike reserve of manner whenever reporters come near me.” Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
By the end of 1889, opposition to Roosevelt was mounting, and it found an outlet in the attacks of Frank Hatton, editor of the Washington Post and himself a former postmaster general. Hatton had discovered an apparent bit of hypocrisy on Roosevelt’s part in investigating the Milwaukee postmaster, George Paul. As he had in New York, Roosevelt relied on the testimony of a dubious character, Hamilton Shidy, a postal supervisor who testified that Paul had rigged the civil service exams to ensure the hiring of party members. After Paul retaliated by firing Shidy, Roosevelt personally intervened with the superintendent of census to secure Shidy a place in the Census Bureau. For opponents of civil service reform and for Roosevelt’s enemies, this was a clear case of Roosevelt utilizing the sort of political influence he was ostensibly fighting. In the Washington Post, Hatton called for a House investigation and the removal of Roosevelt, “this pampered pink of inherited wealth.” In January 1890, the House of Representatives announced an investigation of Roosevelt and the creation of a commission led by Congressman Hamilton Ewart of North Carolina, a leading opponent of civil service reform. As Roosevelt, Shidy, Postmaster Paul, and Postmaster General John Wannamaker all testified before the committee, Hatton targeted Roosevelt in the headlines of the Post. “Roosevelt Knowing His Infamous Character, Forced Him into an Important Position.” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Impersonated by the Reformers.” “The Most Shameful Testimony Ever Offered.” “Even Roosevelt Hung His Head in Shame.” Only a few years before, Roosevelt had been at war with fellow reformers over deciding to back Blaine in 1884. Now Roosevelt was being attacked from the other side.
Still, everyone knew Ewart and Hatton’s agenda, both in Washington and back in New York. Outside of those two cities, few newspapers bothered to dedicate any ink to the House investigation. For every negative headline in Hatton’s Post, New York papers favored Roosevelt and the commission with favorable press. The Times even portrayed the House investigation as “A Tribute to Civil Service Reform.” “Hypocrisy is said to be the tribute that vice pays to virtue,” began an editorial, “and the attack made by such vulgar champions of the spoils system as Messrs. Hatton and Ewart upon the Civil Service Commissioners, under the pretense that they have failed in their duty, may be taken as a conspicuous tribute to the cause of civil service reform.” From President Harrison’s own state, the president of the Indiana Civil Service Reform Association, William Dudley Foulke, wrote a long letter to the Times that the paper reprinted in full. Foulke said that the appointment of Roosevelt to the Civil Service Commission had made that body a real agent of reform. He called Roosevelt “more active, energetic, and aggressive than any who had been upon the board before” and said he enjoyed “the confidence of those who believe in reform everywhere.” Removing Roosevelt, Foulke warned the Harrison administration, would drive the reform element from the Republican Party entirely. This was an important moment for Roosevelt. Since the presidential election of 1884 and the mayoral election of 1886, Roosevelt had had a frosty relationship with reformers in his party. Now that he was under withering attack from the Republican Old Guard, reformers rallied to Roosevelt’s defense.
When the investigating committee finally issued its report, it completely vindicated Roosevelt and the Civil Service Commission. Commissioner Roosevelt, the report stated, had executed his duties “with entire fidelity and integrity.” What had begun as a witch hunt directed at Roosevelt turned into a personal and political triumph for him. Roosevelt not only kept his job, but, back in his hometown, newspapers used the investigating committee report to single out Commissioner Roosevelt for praise. Reformers made the commissioner’s cause their own. Here was an important result of Roosevelt’s tenure as civil service commissioner. It allowed him to once again don the mantle of active reformer, something he had not been able to do while out of office since 1884. By investigating malfeasance in the federal civil service in the face of stiff opposition, often from members of Harrison’s own cabinet, Roosevelt once again attracted to himself the support of the reform wing of the party.
Roosevelt’s time as civil service commissioner could have ended in complete disaster. He had acted with great hubris, thinking he could “shock” the president into acting in line with his wishes. Roosevelt had also taken on powerful interests within his own party, a move that might have completely disqualified him for future positions. It should be remembered that Roosevelt became commissioner after James Blaine rejected Roosevelt for assistant secretary of state, saying Roosevelt lacked “repose” and “patient endurance.” Roosevelt’s actions as civil service commissioner undoubtedly left many other top Republicans sharing Blaine’s assessment of the young man from New York. In the end, however, Roosevelt was not fired from the commission. His time in Washington once again illustrated his ability to perform that most difficult of tightrope acts, as he maneuvered between the two factions of the Republican Party. This was an ability that few men could match, and even fewer in the most important battleground state of New York. Roosevelt’s ability to bridge these two parts of his party was crucial to his future success at the state and national levels.
ROOSEVELT’S YEARS AS CIVIL SERVICE commissioner coincided with his coming into his own as an American historian. There is some irony in the appearance of so many of his western writings while serving as a government official in Washington, DC. In 1891, as part of the Historic Towns series, Longmans, Green and Company published Roosevelt’s history of his hometown, entitled simply New York. The early chapters are a straightforward narration of Manhattan’s discovery by Henry Hudson, the years of Dutch rule, the growth of the British colony, and New York’s first hundred years as America’s premier city. The final chapter, on “Recent History,” however, provides insight into Roosevelt’s views of the city.
Roosevelt always wrote history with a clear message that was relevant to nineteenth-century America. His western writings lauded masculinity, Anglo-Saxon superiority, and continental manifest destiny. His New York observations sounded much like his previous writings on machine politics and his work in the Assembly. “There are shoals of base, ignorant, vicious ‘heelers’ and ‘ward workers,’” Roosevelt wrote, hardly sounding like a historian, “who form a solid, well-disciplined army of evil, led on by abler men whose very ability renders them dangerous.” Referring to the well-oiled urban political machine as an “army of evil” was a classic Roosevelt line. He was far from finished. “Some of these leaders are personally corrupt,” Roosevelt continued. “Others are not, but do almost as much harm as if they were, because they divorce political from private morality.” This was also classic Roosevelt. He was calling for a kind of civic morality that could only be brought about by pulling the best of men into city politics.
Roosevelt’s New York even had some echo of his Federal Club speech of May 1887. Roosevelt still seemed baffled by the independents’ willingness to side with the evil heelers and manipulators of Tammany Hall rather than with the better sort of men in the Republican Party. “Neither the unintelligent and rancorous partisan,” Roosevelt wrote, “nor the unintelligent and rancorous independent, is a desirable member of the body politic; and it is unfortunately true of each of them that he seems to regard with special and sour hatred, not the bad man, but the good man with whom he politically differs.” Again, what this all had to do with the “Recent History” of New York City is unclear. But just as Roosevelt used his Thomas Hart Benton, a biography of America’s leading antebellum advocate of western expansion, to comment on the tariff system in the United States, so he used New York to critique the current political situation in the city, dominated as it was by Tammany and those Mugwumps who were willing to side with the Democrats. Roosevelt was not just a historian, he was a good Republican historian.
In later years, especially during World War I, Roosevelt would worry about the dual identities of recent immigrants, such as German Americans and Italian Americans. In New York, however, Roosevelt only saw the great, underlying patriotism of the city’s immigrant community. The 1889 centennial celebration of the US Constitution had illustrated this patriotism: even in the poorest of the tenement districts, foreign-born New Yorkers displayed the Stars and Stripes and portraits of Washington. “Thus,” concluded Roosevelt, “there is no doubt that in case of any important foreign war or domestic disturbance New York would back up the general movement with men and money to a practically unlimited extent.” New York was published just on the cusp of the great turn-of-the-century wave of immigration that would transform the city and the nation. Roosevelt had yet to witness the unprecedented millions who were about to step onto the streets of Manhattan. New York was published in 1891. Ellis Island opened the following year.
In his memoirs, Roosevelt would extol the outdoors and the western experience he had enjoyed as a young man in the 1880s. In 1891, however, Roosevelt praised the opportunities of America’s largest city. New York’s life, he wrote, “is so intense and so varied, and so full of manifold possibilities, that it has a special and peculiar fascination for ambitious and high-spirited men of every kind, whether they wish to enjoy the fruits of past toil, or whether they have yet their fortunes to make, and feel confident that they can swim in troubled waters—for weaklings have small chance of forging to the front against the turbulent tide of our city life.” New York, then, rivaled the West for instilling and fostering in a young man the fighting spirit and the vigor of life. “The truth is,” Roosevelt concluded, “that every man worth his salt has open to him in New York a career of boundless usefulness and interest.”
Would Roosevelt have ever uttered anything like Horace Greeley’s famous advice, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country”? It seems unlikely, especially as Roosevelt himself was witnessing America’s astonishing growth from an urban perspective. Go West? No, the boundless opportunities were in the East. “Go East, young man,” Roosevelt seemed to be saying in 1891. “Go to New York and grow up with the country.”
AS HIS HISTORY OF NEW YORK indicated, the city was still very much on Roosevelt’s mind. After Grover Cleveland won back the White House in the 1892 election, it appeared that the civil service commissioner might be heading back there very soon. Would the Democrat keep the Republican Roosevelt?
In late December and early January, Roosevelt used sixty-three-year-old Carl Schurz as an intermediary with the newly elected president. Roosevelt and Schurz had a tense relationship going back to the election of 1884. Schurz no longer spoke to Henry Cabot Lodge, because Lodge had eventually backed James Blaine for the presidency. In 1886, Schurz had failed to back Roosevelt for mayor. A New York Mugwump, Schurz was exactly the sort of casual Republican that Roosevelt loathed. But in 1892, Schurz had succeeded George William Curtis as president of the National Civil Service Reform League. Although politically, Roosevelt was frequently at odds with such men as editor E. L. Godkin and Schurz, when it came to civil service reform, they were all allies. On January 4, 1893, Schurz wrote Roosevelt to say that Cleveland “wishes very much to see you.” Two weeks later, Schurz accompanied Roosevelt to a meeting with Cleveland, where the men discussed civil service reform. But Cleveland was slow in asking Roosevelt to stay. When he finally did in April, it came as a tremendous relief to Roosevelt. With the Democrats in office, Roosevelt had faced the very real possibility of becoming unemployed.
Serving another term as civil service commissioner had its drawbacks, however. First of all, Cleveland asked Roosevelt to stay on for only another year or two. By 1894, Roosevelt would need to start looking for another post. Second, as Roosevelt noted to Schurz, he was now in the odd position of being “a Republican fighting Democratic colleagues over the actions of Democratic spoilsmen under a Democratic administration.” Although Roosevelt might gain some favor with Republican leaders for going after Cleveland appointees, he risked having people doubt his motives. Moreover, serving the cause of reform under a Democratic president seemed like something Carl Schurz would do. There was something of the Mugwump in it, and Roosevelt was no Mugwump. Finally, staying in Washington for five or six years in an appointed position was not the best stepping-stone to higher office. His friend Henry Cabot Lodge was proof to the contrary: Lodge had never served in a Washington post, but had found advancement through the Massachusetts Republican Party. Just as Roosevelt secured another year or two on the Civil Service Commission, Lodge was elected to the US Senate. The junior senator from Massachusetts would not have to worry about reelection until nearly the end of the century. Roosevelt, though, was already worrying about 1894, and beyond that, the presidential election year of 1896.
With President Cleveland serving his second, nonconsecutive term, the 1896 presidential contest would be wide open. Republicans were already lining up behind their candidates, such as old Levi Morton of New York, House Speaker Tom Reed, and Ohio’s William McKinley Cleveland had been reelected in 1892 largely on the issue of tariff reform, which was a major national issue for much of the late nineteenth century. Earthshaking global events, however, were about to change the very language of American politics.
By the 1880s, the railroad industry was suffering from overbuilding and bad financing. Just days before Cleveland’s second inauguration, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt. Banks and other businesses soon followed. As the economic crisis worsened, people withdrew their money from banks, and credit virtually dried up. Many on Wall Street, and the new president himself, fixed blame on the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. This act, backed by farming and mining interests, required the government to purchase massive amounts of silver every month. Special Treasury notes were issued for the silver purchases, notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold. The plan backfired when investors turned in the Treasury notes for gold, depleting the nation’s gold supply. Soon after taking office, Cleveland convened a special session of Congress and called for repeal of the Sherman Act. The president pointed out that in the three years since the act was passed, gold bullion reserves had decreased by more than $132 million, while silver reserves had increased during the same time by more than $147 million. Repealing the act would send a strong message about the soundness of the US dollar and, Cleveland hoped, revive the economy. Back in December 1887, in calling for steep tariff reductions, Cleveland had kicked over a hornets’ nest. Only days into his new term, he had done it again.
American politics had changed radically in the past few years. In 1892, delegates from various labor and farmers’ groups had formed the People’s Party, known as the Populists. The Populist platform included many remedies to the perceived inequalities in the American marketplace that agrarian and labor advocates had been backing for years: the eight-hour workday, redistribution of wealth through a graduated income tax, direct election of US senators, and government ownership of railroads, for example. Such ideas would form the cornerstone of the Progressive Era. Another key idea of the Populists related to the money supply. By 1893, the United States had been on the gold standard for twenty years. Every paper dollar circulating in the country was backed by an equal value of gold. Business leaders liked the gold standard because it placed the US dollar, and thus the whole economy, on a firm foundation—a solid-gold foundation. Gold kept inflation down and reassured European lenders of the dollar’s stability. After all, the building of American railroads and industry was largely financed by European banks, as the United States remained the largest debtor nation on earth until the Great War.
Farmers hated the gold standard. A tight money supply kept crop prices down and placed a stranglehold on credit. Loosening the money supply by printing more money allowed moderate inflation to occur, pushing up crop prices and land values and allowing banks to give out more credit. Populists and others did not advocate abandoning the gold standard completely, but rather, backing the dollar with both gold and silver. Democratic congressman William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska was a leading bimetallist. When Cleveland called for repeal of the Sherman Act, Bryan, serving his second term in the House, replied with a rousing speech. “Whence comes this irresistible demand for unconditional repeal?” Bryan asked. “Not from the workshops and farms, not from the working men of this country, who create the wealth in time of peace and protect its flag in time of war, but from the middlemen, from what are termed the ‘business interests,’ and largely from that class which can force Congress to let it issue money at a pecuniary profit to itself if silver is abandoned.” The president, Bryan said, had been deceived by these interests, the alliance between government, banks, and corporations that he would later call “The Money Power.” The “Boy Orator” was unsuccessful, and the Sherman Act was repealed. Cleveland won the day but split his party in the process, creating a new issue—“free silver” vs. the gold standard—that would play out in the 1896 election.
ROOSEVELT HAD TO GET BACK to New York before 1896. Ideally, he would be asked to run for office in the 1894 congressional or city elections. Everything seemed to be falling into place when Roosevelt was approached about once again running for mayor in 1894. Edith opposed the idea, however, believing the family could not afford the expense of the campaign. Roosevelt deferred to his wife, yet instantly regretted the decision. City Republicans chose another reform candidate, businessman William Strong. “I made a mistake in not trying my luck in the mayoralty race,” Roosevelt wrote his sister Anna. “The prize was very great; the expense would have been trivial; and the chances of success were good. I would have run better than Strong.” Always one to look and move forward, this was a rare expression of regret by Roosevelt. His regret must have only increased when Strong won. Until now, Roosevelt had been only a state assemblyman and a US civil service commissioner. Being the chief executive of the nation’s largest and most important city would have suited Roosevelt well. He had been a good-government advocate for years, dedicated to battling Tammany Hall and the corruption and inefficiency that plagued American cities. While in the Assembly, he had been responsible for making New York’s mayor a powerful office, answerable more to the voters than to political bosses or aldermen. A Roosevelt mayoralty in 1895 might have ushered in a period of great reform for New York City. Moreover, he could have returned to the city of his birth and lived with his family at Sagamore Hill. The chance had slipped through his fingers.
Yes, with the election of 1896 looming, Roosevelt needed to return to New York. The city—its politics, its people, its problems, and even its long history—was never far from his mind.