Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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III. Early Lessons in Politics
IN the year when President Garfield died, New York saw the unusual sight of two young “silk-stockings,” neither of whom had ever been in politics before, running for office in a popular election. One was the representative of vast inherited wealth, the other of the bluest of the old Knickerbocker blood: William Waldorf Astor and Theodore Roosevelt. One ran for Congress, pouring out money like water, contemptuously confident that so he could buy his way in. The newspapers reported his nightly progress from saloon to saloon, where “the boys” were thirstily waiting to whoop it up for him, and the size of “the wad” he left at each place, as with illsuppressed disgust he fled to the next. The other, nominated for the State Legislature on
