nd then proceeded to set forth his own view
of the matter. With his usual almost uncanny wisdom in human relations,
he based his argument on party expediency, which he knew Platt would
comprehend, rather than on abstract considerations of right and wrong,
in which realm the boss would be sure to feel rather at sea. He wrote
thus:

"I know that when parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] the
tendency is to force everybody into one of two camps, and to throw out
entirely men like myself, who are as strongly opposed to Populism in
every stage as the greatest representative of corporate wealth but
who also feel strongly that many of these representatives of enormous
corporate wealth have themselves been responsible for a portion of
the conditions against which Bryanism is in ignorant revolt. I do not
believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere
negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to
me that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby
showing that whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others do not
correct the evils at all, or else do so at the expense of producing
others in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold the
just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate
influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the
other."*

*Roosevelt, Autobiography (Scribner), p. 300.

This was the fight that Roosevelt was waging in every hour of his
political career. It was a middle-of-the-road fight, not because of any
timidity or slack-fibered thinking which prevented a committal to one
extreme or the other, but because of a stern conviction that in the
golden middle course was to be found truth and the right. It was an
inevitable consequence that first one side and then the other--and
sometimes both at once--should attack him as a champion of the other.
It became a commonplace of his experience to be inveighed against by
reformers as a reactionary and to be assailed by conservatives as a
radical. But this paradoxical experience did not disturb him at all. He
was concerned only to have the testimony of his own mind and conscience
that he was right.

The contests which he had as Governor were spectacular and exhilarating;
but they did not fill all the hours of his working days. A tremendous
amount of spade work was actually accomplished. For example, he
brought about the reenactment of the Civi