Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-06-09
Fiue Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
The Life.
BY JAMES MORGAN.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the
Imost popular of all our Presidents.
With the exception of Lincoln. his was
the %raciest. the most interesting char
acter that we have had in the Presi-
idency.
Yet he was born apart from the
multitude whom he led and he might
have lived and died u stranger to the
masses of his countrymen but for one
thing; He had not the health to enjoy
the life of ease which opened to him
at his birth. Roosevelt had to fight
for his very breath in his %gasping,
asthmatic childhood. He had to hght
even to see until he was thirteen, when
it was discovered that the
stumbling boy was in need of eye-
glasses. He had to fight to get into
Harvard. without the stimulating COM
panlonship and competition of school,
mates, his uncertain health having put
him out of step with his fellows and.
except for a few months. he never at
tended a public or private school. All
the while he had 10 fight for the
strength to hold his own among the
harder. ~rougher boys who. boylille.
picked on the timid weakling, and he
built up his frail body and braced up
his courage by constant exercise at
home. in the fields and in the woods.
Finally he o o a postgraduate
- 10 IA Hil1AAaA tulLuIG III lIG w u
West, where the four-eyed tenderfoot"
had TO fight the battle of his youth all
over again in q strange world. with en-
ttrely different standards for msasur-
ling a man. As @ ranchman out on the !
!"blizzard-swept plains of North Dakota, |
he had to make good by working as
hard and daring as much as the next !
fellow; keeping his saddle for forty
hours at a stretch on a round up"
and showing himself on occasion
quicker with his fists than some bar
room rowdy was with his guns. II
the end h frontier made over the
raw material from Fifth Avenue into !,
an American of the type of Washing
ton, Jackson and Lincoln. all frontiers
men.
Having overcome the disadvantage |
of being born o o in health, Roose-
welt next oV rcame the disadvantage
|of being bor- with a rich father. In
the entire ste. Y of the Presidency
there is in reali y no better example Of
a "self-made" Ian."
When ne had fought his way to a
robust manhood, Roosevelt found that
he could not be content to dawdle in
a club window or be a mere looker-on
In the world. Having contracted the
lighting habit, he could not stop fight
ling. and he fought his way into poll
tics and into the Legislature.
The ward politicians did not want
any silk stocking" from the AVE
nue." and the gilded youth of Murray
Hill. who never worked and never
will" snickered at Teddy" for mixing
lup with the groom and the saloon
keeper" at the district headquartersI
But he retorted hat II this was the
governing class in New York. he want
ed to belong to 1t. Still they kept on
Laughing at him for twenty years, until
one day they saw him laughing back
at them from a window of the White
House.
Roosevelt cut his eye teeth in politi-
zeal leadership in the corrupt, machine
run Legislature of New York. He
lcould not have chosen a more thor
lough school for instruction in the hid
lden, muddy springs of parties and
politics. His experience at Albany put
realism into his idealism and made the
academic reformer over into the most
intensely practical politician we have
had in the Presidency. 1t also tighten
ed his zeal with humor, his moral in
dignation with a saving tolerance. en-
abling him to enjoy n pass along
Tim" Campbell's moving appeal to
him not to ''let the Constitution stand
between friends"
He decided at the outset to act in
each office as IL IL was to be the last
that he ever would get. and for nearly
fifteen years after he left the Legisla-
ture Roosevelt could not have been
,~elected to anything in the boss-ridden
State of New York. For a long time |
he was "shelved" on the Civil Service
Commission at Washington. until a re-
form Mayor of New York appointed
him on the four-headed Police Com
mission: but II was soon ~single-head-
ed so far as the public could see, and
that head was full of teeth for police
grafters and law breakers. At thirty |
eight the most that he could ask of the |
Republican politicians, with any hope |
of getting it, was the assistant secre- |
taryship of the Navy.
Mckinley was reluctant to let him
have even that modest post. for fear
that he might shake the tranquil at
mosphere of his Administration The
Presidents premonition was correct. |
The Assistant Secretary contrived to
keep things so stirred up, in his clear |
eyed anticipation of war with Spain, |
that the entire Administration sighed
with relief when at last he went off
to lead his Rough Riders to the fight |
ing front in the Spanish War.
In five months he was back from
in the far more troublesome role
of a. popular hero. The New York MAJ
chine was In such sore need of a good
name to pull it through the pending
election that 1t met him at the wharf
and humbly laid at his feet the Re-
publican nomination for Governor.
But in the Governorship. he realized |
the worst fears of Boss Plat that he
.harbored, as the Boss naively wrote
him. various altruistie IDEAS" and
that he was IA little loose ON the re-
of capital and labor, on trusts
and combinations and the
right OF a man to run his own business
in his own way"
The only thing to do with this wild
engine was to turf the switch n
Ishunt IL on to the side track of the
Vice Presidency. Roosevelt loudly
protested that he wanted to be re-
elected Governor. And while Plat was
to push him on to the National
Mckinley and Hanna just as
|earnestly tried to push him back an to |
Plat. The Republican National con
|venfion rose up and reared his nomi-
nation. flinging him. in spite Of him