Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 209
| into making such a choice, that being the very end and aim and meaning of their political existence. They grumbled because he would “see the party bosses.” Of course he would—see anybody that could help him get things done; for he had certain definite ends of good government in view, and it was no more to his taste to pose on the solitary peak of abortive righteousness as Governor, than it had been as a legislator. Yes, he would see the bosses, and he went right up to the front door and told the newspaper men his business, though they tried to smuggle him in secretly by the back way, to save his feelings. His feelings were n’t hurt a bit. If he could make the machine work with him for good, he had killed two birds with one stone, for so it would be a more effective machine for party purposes as he saw them. As for its working him to its uses—the bosses knew better. The reformers did not. They sat and mourned, needlessly. |
| For him—I thought more than once in those days of a paragraph he had written about practical politics while he was yet a Civil Service Commissioner practising them with might and main. How much of prophecy there is in |