The Owosso times., 1900-08-03
Roosevelt's Courage in Office.

l read story when was boy about 9
man who, pursued by relentless enemy,
dwelt in security because of his belief thai
his plotting could not hurt an honest man.
Mr.. Roosevelt constantly made me think o.
him. He spoke of 1t only once, but saw
him act out that belief hundred times.
Mulberry Street could never have been
made to take any stock In 1t. When 1t
failed to awe Roosevelt,i II tried to catch him.
Jobs innumerable were put up to discredit
the president of the board and inveigle him
into awkward positions. Probably he never
knew of one-tenth of them. often made
them out long after they we're scattered to
the winds Mr.. Roosevelt walked through
them with perfect unc0ncern, kicking aside
the snares that were set so elabOratelv to
catch him. The politicians who saw him
walk apparently blindly into trap and be-
held him emerge with damage to the trap
only could not understand 1t. They con-
cluded 1t was his luck. 1t was not. 1t was
his sense. He told me once after such a
time that 1t was matter of conviction with
him that no frank and honest man could be
In the long run entangled by the snares of
plotters, whatever appearances might for
the moment indicate. So he walked un-
harmed in 1t all. Bismark confounded the
councils of Europe at times by practising
RooOevelt's plan as a trick. He spoke the
truth bluntly when the plotters expected
him to lie and rounded them up easily
One charge his enemies made against
him in which there was truth. II summed
itself all up in that with heat that was
virtual acknowledgement of its being the
whole arraignment; that there was always
fight where he was. ''Always trouble"
said the peace -at-any-p men, who coun-'
seled surrender when Roosevelt was fight
ing for decent Sunday through the en-
forcement of the law compelling the saloons
to'close. "Never any rest" No! There
was never any rest for the law breakers
when he was around, nor for those who
would avoid ''trouble" by weakly surren-
dering to them. Roosevelt gauged New
York exactly right when he set about his
turbulent programme of enforcement of law.
The scandal was not that we were being
robbed by political cutthroats, but that we
submitted tamely. The formula we heard
so often from his lips in the years that fol-
lowed-honesty, manhood, courage-was
II" exact prescription we needed. We In
the metropolis are abundantly able to run
the robbers out of town and keep them out
by just following the road he made for us
when he ran them out of the police dapart-
ment. But he made 1t, lighting. 1t was
true that there was never any rest while he
was at II, night or day When he had
battled all day in Mulberry Street, he would
sometimes get up at two o'clock in the morn
ing and go out on patrol to find out the
policemen who were stealing the city's time
loved to go out with him on these trips,
wherever he was, but because of the keen
enjoyment he took In his work and in every
faithful policeman he found on his post
Some well-fed citizens who hated to have
their rest disturbed sneered at these noctur-
nal excursions; but they slept more securely
in their beds because of them. 1t became
suddenly possible to find a policeman any
where at any hour of the night in New
York. Within year after the old Tam
many regime had come back, an epidemic
of night fires that cost many lives brought
from the iremen the loud protest that
policemen were not awake, and the chief
found it necessary to transfer half the force
of a precinct for sleeping on post. From
Theodore Roosevelt" by Jacob A. Riis, in
the American Monthly Review of Reviews
for August