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party. Mr. Platt was a feeble man, who found it difficult to get about. Roosevelt was a chivalrous man, who believed that courtesy and consideration were due to age and weakness. In addition, he liked to make every minute count. So he used to go, frankly and openly, to the Senator's hotel for breakfast. He was not one of that class which he has described as composed of "solemn reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid attention to the name and not the thing." He cared only for the reality; the appearance mattered little to him. The tom-fool reformers who criticized Roosevelt for meeting Platt at breakfast were not even good observers. If they had been, they would have realized that when Roosevelt breakfasted with Platt, it generally meant that he was trying to reconcile the Senator to something he was going to do which the worthy boss did not like. For instance, Roosevelt once wrote to Platt, who was trying to get him to promote a certain judge over the head of another judge: "There is a strong feeling among the judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at 8:30." It is probable that the Governor enjoyed that breakfast more than did the Senator. So it usually was with the famous breakfasts. "A series of breakfasts was always the prelude to some active warfare." For Roosevelt and Platt still had their pitched battles. The most epic of them all was fought over the reappointment of the State Superintendent of Insurance. The incumbent was Louis F. Payn, a veteran petty boss from a country district and one of Platt's right-hand men. Roosevelt discovered that Payn had been involved in compromising relations with certain financiers in New York with whom he "did not deem it expedient that the Superintendent of Insurance, while such, should have any intimate and money-making relations." The Governor therefore decided not to reappoint him. Platt issued an ultimatum that Payn must be reappointed or he would fight. He pointed out that in case of a fight Payn would stay in anyway, since the consent of the State Senate was necessary not only to appoint a man to office but to remove him from office. The Governor replied cheerfully that he had made up his mind
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