the man the office. This is entirely true of certain offices at certain
times. It is entirely untrue when the circumstances are different.
It would have been unnecessary and undesirable for Washington to
have sought the Presidency. But if Abraham Lincoln had not sought the
Presidency he never would have been nominated. The objection in such a
case as this lies not to seeking the office, but to seeking it in any
but an honorable and proper manner. The effect of the shibboleth in
question is usually merely to put a premium on hypocrisy, and therefore
to favor the creature who is willing to rise by hypocrisy. When I ran
for Speaker, the whole body of machine politicians was against me, and
my only chance lay in arousing the people in the different districts. To
do this I had to visit the districts, put the case fairly before the men
whom I saw, and make them understand that I was really making a fight
and would stay in the fight to the end. Yet there were reformers who
shook their heads and deplored my "activity" in the canvass. Of course
the one thing which corrupt machine politicians most desire is to have
decent men frown on the activity, that is, on the efficiency, of the
honest man who genuinely wishes to reform politics.

If efficiency is left solely to bad men, and if virtue is confined
solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. When I entered
politics there were, as there always had been--and as there always will
be--any number of bad men in politics who were thoroughly efficient,
and any number of good men who would like to have done lofty things in
politics but who were thoroughly inefficient. If I wished to accomplish
anything for the country, my business was to combine decency and
efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his
best to reduce those ideals to actual practice. This was my ideal, and
to the best of my ability I strove to live up to it.

To a young man, life in the New York Legislature was always interesting
and often entertaining. There was always a struggle of some kind on
hand. Sometimes it was on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes
it was on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, there
were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor being usually of the
unconscious kind. In one session of the Legislature the New York City
Democratic representatives were split into two camps, and there were
two rivals for leadership. One of these