The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (80 page)

While peaceful, the capital was by no means provincial. Indeed, the decade just ending had seen its transformation from rather shabby respectability to the heights of social splendor. People who spent their summers at Newport and Saratoga were spending their winters in Washington.
⁴
Some had been drawn by the magnetism of Mrs. Cleveland, now regrettably departed (although imitations of her famous smile lingered on a thousand homelier faces, reminding one correspondent of so many cats chewing wax).
⁵
Most of Washington’s fashionable newcomers, however, were drawn by the desire to be at the power center of an increasingly powerful country. Power, not breeding, was the basis of protocol in this democratic town: there was something wickedly exciting about it. Knickerbockers and Brahmins vied for the company of Western Senators at dinner, laughing at their filthy stories and tolerating their squirts of tobacco-juice; debutantes and newsboys swayed side by side in the horsecars with Supreme Court Justices; the President of the United States could often be seen, a small, bearded, buttoned-up figure, sipping soda in a corner drugstore.
⁶

Another significant difference between Washington and most major American cities was the apparent contentment of its working class—particularly now the party of Lincoln was back in control. A thriving
demimonde
offered blacks opportunities for advancement in such government-related industries as prostitution, vote-selling, and land speculation. Here, indeed, were to be found the nation’s wealthiest black entrepreneurs, and “colored girls more luscious than any women ever painted by Peter Paul Rubens.” They could be seen on a Saturday afternoon strolling in silks and sealskins on the White House lawn, to promenade music by Professor Sousa’s Marine Band.
⁷

Apart from the several thousands of shanty-dwellers, whose slums could be smelled, if not seen, in the vacant lots behind the great federal buildings, Washington society was prosperous, and graded more by occupation than color. Its unique feature was an ephemeral upper class which turned over every four years, according to the vagaries of politics. Hardly any member of this class, be he diplomat, Congressman, or Civil Service Commissioner, expected
to settle permanently in the capital; sooner or later his government would recall him, or his campaign for reelection fail, or a whim of the President leave him jobless overnight.

Servicing the upper class was a middle-to-lower class of realtors, caterers, couturiers, landladies, and servants—all determined to profit by the constant comings and goings of their clients. After every Congressional election, prices rose; after every change of Administration, they soared. But federal pay scales remained fixed at levels set in the 1870s. By 1889 the city had grown so expensive that anybody accepting a fairly senior government job had to have independent means to survive.
⁸
On the Sunday before Roosevelt’s arrival, eight-room houses in the obligatory Northwest sector were being advertised for sale at around $6,500, almost twice a Commissioner’s salary. But this was nothing: a thirteen-room house on Pennsylvania Avenue near Nineteenth was $12,500; something more the size of Sagamore Hill, albeit with a much smaller garden, was available on Vermont Avenue for $125,000.
⁹
Rents were proportionately exorbitant; the pokiest little furnished house would cost him $2,400 a year.
¹⁰
Allowing a conservative $1,000 for food, $300 for servants, and $200 for fuel, he could spend every cent of his salary without so much as buying a new suit.
¹¹
On top of that there was Sagamore Hill to maintain, and Edith was pregnant again.

The baby was not due for another five months, but it served as an excuse to keep his family at Oyster Bay at least through November. Meanwhile he could lead a cheap bachelor life in Washington—rent-free, as the vacationing Lodges had placed their house on Connecticut Avenue at his disposal.
¹²

So when Roosevelt arrived in town on the morning of Monday, 13 May 1889, he was alone, just like thousands of other hopeful newcomers in the early days of the Harrison Administration. Unlike them, however, he had a desk waiting for him, and a commission, signed by the President of the United States, lying upon it.
¹³

I
T WAS NOT YET
ten o’clock, but the sun was bright and strong. A cool breeze blowing off the Potomac tempered the seventy-degree heat. All Washington sparkled, thanks to torrential rainstorms over the weekend. Fallen locust-blossoms carpeted the sidewalks, rotting
sweetly as pedestrians sauntered to and fro. Straw hats and silk bonnets were out in force: summer, evidently, was considered to be a
fait accompli
in the nation’s capital, regardless of what the calendar said.
¹⁴

Roosevelt found the Civil Service Commission impressively located in the west wing of City Hall, at the south end of Judiciary Square. Tall Ionic columns rose above a flight of seventeen stone steps, which he could not resist taking at a run.
¹⁵
By the time he had crossed the portico and burst into the office beyond, his adrenaline was already flowing.

“I am the new Civil Service Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt of New York,” he announced to the first clerk he saw. “Have you a telephone? Call up the Ebbit House. I have an engagement with Archbishop Ireland. Say that I will be there at ten o’clock.”

His clear voice sounded “peculiarly pleasant” as it broke the bureaucratic stillness. Yet it had an incisive edge to it that made the clerk jump to his feet.
¹⁶

Within minutes Roosevelt had taken the oath, and moved into the largest and sunniest of the three Commissioners’ offices.
¹⁷
Although his gray-haired colleagues, Charles Lyman (Republican) and ex-Governor Hugh S. Thompson of South Carolina (Democrat), were nominally senior to him, he seems to have been accepted,
de ipse
, as leader from the start.
¹⁸
Lyman’s subsequent election as president of the Commission in no way affected this arrangement. Roosevelt liked both of them, as he did everyone at first, then lost patience with them, as he did with most people sooner or later. Lyman turned out to be “the most intolerably slow of all men who ever adored red tape,”
¹⁹
while Thompson was “a nice old boy,” but not much else.
²⁰
However Roosevelt managed to keep these opinions private, and the professional harmony among the three was such that some members of Harrison’s Cabinet began to worry about it. The last thing they needed, as they began to hand out appointments for services rendered, was an active Civil Service Commission.

I
T IS DIFFICULT
for Americans living in the first quarter of the twenty-first century to understand the emotions which Civil Service
Reform aroused in the last quarter of the nineteenth. The movement’s literature has about it all the faded ludicrousness of Moral Rearmament. How could intellectuals, politicians, socialites, churchmen, and editors campaign so fervently on behalf of customs clerks, Indian school superintendents, and Fourth-Class postmasters? How could they wax so lyrical about quotas, certifications, political assessments, and lists of eligibles? How, indeed, could one reformer entitle his memoirs
The Romance of the Merit System
?
²¹

The fact remains that thousands, even millions, lined up behind the banner, and they were as evangelical (and as strenuously resisted) as any crusaders in history. To them Civil Service Reform was “a dream at first, and then a passionate cause which the ethical would not let sleep.”
²²
Men and women of the highest quality devoted whole careers to it, and died triumphant in the knowledge that, due to their personal efforts, the classified departmental service had been extended by so many dozen places in Buffalo, or that algebraic equations had been deleted from the examination papers of cattle inspectors in Arizona.

For all its dated aspects, Civil Service Reform was an honorable cause, and of real social consequence. It sought to restore to government three fundamental principles of American democracy: first, that opportunity be made equal to all citizens; second, that the meritorious only be appointed; third, that no public servants should suffer for their political beliefs. The movement’s power base—admittedly a rickety one—was the Pendleton Act of 1883, which guaranteed that at least a quarter of all federal jobs were available to the best qualified applicant, irrespective of party, and that those jobs would remain secure, irrespective of changes in Administration.
²³

Few converts believed in the above principles more sincerely than Theodore Roosevelt. He had become fascinated with Civil Service Reform shortly after leaving college, and, as an Assemblyman, had helped bring about the first state Civil Service law in the country, closely based on the Pendleton Act. He had joined Civil Service Reform clubs, subscribed to Civil Service Reform journals, and preached the doctrine of Civil Service Reform to numerous audiences. His acceptance of the Commissionership, therefore, seemed natural and inevitable to his colleagues in the movement,
although many believed he had sacrificed his political future by doing so.
²⁴
There would be times, during the next six years, when he was tempted to agree with them.

O
N THE MORNING
after taking his oath of office, Roosevelt went to pay his respects to the President. He was prepared not to like him, for the little general was famously repellent in manner. With his fat cheeks, weak stoop, and small, suspicious eyes, Benjamin Harrison reminded one visitor of “a pig blinking in a cold wind.”
²⁵
It was hard to believe that this sour, silent Hoosier possessed the finest legal mind in the history of the White House, or that he was capable of reducing large audiences to tears with the beauty of his oratory.
²⁶
It was even harder to believe the old friend who assured the press, “When he’s on a fishing trip, Ben takes his drink of whiskey in the morning, just like anyone else … spits on his worm for luck, and cusses when the fish get away.”
²⁷

But during Roosevelt’s visit, Harrison made a less dyspeptic impression than usual. He had just returned from a cruise down the Potomac, and looked ruddy and clear-eyed.
²⁸
The President must have given his new Commissioner assurances of support, for Roosevelt was ebullient when he burst out of the Executive Office. He nearly collided with the only other member of the Administration whose personal impetus matched his own: big, bustling, baby-faced John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia retail millionaire and new Postmaster General. Roosevelt recognized him, and the two men exchanged hearty greetings.

Other Cabinet officers were arriving to meet with the President, and Wanamaker introduced Roosevelt all around. There were jokes about the young man’s presumed authority over federal jobs. “You haven’t any power over my place, anyway,” said the Secretary of the Navy, in mock relief. “If I had to pass a civil-service examination for mine,” Roosevelt answered, “I would never have been appointed.” “I’m glad you realize that,” growled the Secretary of Agriculture.
²⁹