Two years later he returned to New York to accept the Republican nomination for mayor, tendered him principally because the more wealthy and conservative element of his party was alarmed by the candidacy of Henry George, representing an ephemeral °United Labor° or ganization; Roosevelt was defeated on this oc casion, mainly by reason of defections among the same class of his supporters who deemed Abram S. Hewitt, the Tammany nominee, a °safer° mayor for their purposes. In February 1889 he attended a National Conference of Civil Service Reformers in Baltimore and there ex pressed such outspoken and unqualified devo tion to the principles of the merit system that President Harrison appointed him a member of the Civil Service Commission. In this post he made the Civil Service Law a living force for good government and pure politics and himself a source of real terror to politicians who had previously believed, with good reason, and acted on the belief that this statute and the commis sion it created could be safely ignored and de fied by officials having °pull.° He remained in cffice for more than three years after Presi dent Cleveland had succeeded President Harri son, resigning to become one of the police com missioners of New York City, appointed by Mayor Strong after the Reform victory of 1894. Here again he showed himself the fearless and inflexible enemy of the many abuses which had become chronic in the New York police, and thereby incurred the rancorous hostility of all those who profited, in one way or another, by these abuses, including many citizens outwardly reputable and ready to favor reforms so long as these led only to talk, but shocked by Roose velt's thoroughgoing and practical discharge of his sworn duty. After two years of what he called a °grimy struggle° he was given a new field of useful activity by his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
For Roosevelt it was a labor of love to pro mote the efficiency of the American navy, and to his energy, eminent talents for administration and fervent patriotism the brilliant success of our fleets in the war with Spain must be fairly ascribed in very large measure. He took part in the war, however, in another capacity; as soon as its outbreak became certain he tendered his services as a soldier, was offered the com mand of a regiment of volunteer cavalry, de clined this in view of the superior experience of his old friend, afterward Maj. Gen. Leon ard Wood, then a surgeon with a notable record as an Indian-fighter, but accepted a commission as lieutenant-colonel in the same organization, soon to be known as the famous Rough Riders, and served with distinction at the engagement of Las Guasimas and the battle of San Juan Hill. He became colonel of the regiment when Colo nel Wood was promoted, was nominated brevet brigadier-general °for gallantry in battle° and was warmly commended by Generals Wheeler, Young, Sumner and Wood and several other officers of rank who were eye-witnesses of his conduct. When his regiment was disbanded he became at once the Republican candidate for governor of New York.
He owed his nomination to the extremity of the bosses and bosslings then in control of the party, who at that time hated Roosevelt, but hated yet more their own exclusion from power and its profits, and recognized that he was the only man they could then put up with any hope of victory. The result justified both their fore
cast and their antipathy, for Roosevelt was elected by a good majority and also proved him self as unsatisfactory a governor, for their pur poses, as he had been an assemblyman 17 years before. Especially did he render himself ob noxious to wealthy corporations and to the prominent politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) employed by such corporations by insisting on their paying reasonable taxes on their franchises. As the only means to prevent his obtaining a second term as governor, the leading Republican politicians tried to force and finally succeeded in forcing upon him the nomination for the Vice-Presidency at the Na tional Convention of 1900 in Philadelphia.
It had been the hope of these politicians that, when thus °kicked upstairs? he would be re duced to ornamental impotency; but these calcu lations were falsified by the murder of Presi dent McKinley, and, on 14 Sept. 1901, Theo dore Roosevelt took the oath of office as Presi dent at the house of Mr. Ansley Wilcox in Buffalo. On 8 Nov. 1904 he was elected to the same office against Judge Alton B. Parker, the Democratic candidate, by 330 electoral votes to 136 and a popular majority of some two mil lions and a half.
To relate, even in the barest outline, the events of Roosevelt's Presidency would be quite impossible within the limits of this article. His virtually enforced adjustment of the great coal strike, his long struggle, in Congress and the courts, with (trusts° and combinations in re strain! of trade and actual or threatened mo nopolies, his successful mediation between Rus 51a arid Japan, his restoration of order in Cuba, his vindication of the Monroe Doctrine in the case of Venezuela, his rescue of the Isthmus from Colombia and construction of the Pan ama Canal, his steadfast and untiring efforts to preserve the public lands from misappropriation and trespass on the part of land thieves, to de velop the country's natural resources for the benefit of the people and to detect, root out and punish corruption and breach of trust in all branches of the public service — each of these subjects could be fairly and adequately treated only if it had an article to itself as long as the present. The history of his Presidency was, in short, the history of the United States during seven and a half years of great moment. On the evening of election day 1904 he said pub licly that he would not accept a nomination for another term. To this determination he ad hered inflexibly in 1908, resisting a tremendous pressure from almost every part of the country, based upon the universal conviction that his nomination and election were absolutely certain if his consent could be obtained, and a large measure of doubt as to whether he could transfer to any other candidate enough of his own immense popularity to assure the latter's choice. He succeeded, however, in bringing about the nomination and election, as his suc cessor, of William Howard Taft, whom he had selected, after very serious consideration and some hesitancy, as on the whole the most suit able among the public men connected with his administration to continue the practical appli cation of his theories and principles in the con duct of the government. A few weeks after Mr. Taft's inauguration Roosevelt started on a hunting trip to East Africa.