Theodore Roosevelt: An AutobiographyRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Roosevelt, Theodore
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, well-educated young
fellow, an ardent believer in Henry George. At the beginning he and I
failed to understand each other or to get on together, for our theories
of government were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent in
active contests with men whose theories had nothing whatever to do with
their practices, Kelly and I found in our turn that it really did not
make much difference what our abstract theories were on questions that
were not before the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual
matters before the Legislature, the most important of which involved
questions of elementary morality, we were heartily at one. We began to
vote together and act together, and by the end of the session found that
in all practical matters that were up for action we thought together.
Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his theories, so that even
in theory we were coming closer together. He was ardent and generous; he
was a young lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had tempted
him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses
under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really
wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly
defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and good faith,
and when the bosses refused him a renomination, he appealed from them
to the people. When we both came up for reelection, I won easily in my
district, where circumstances conspired to favor me; and Kelly, with
exactly the same record that I had, except that it was more creditable
because he took his stand against greater odds, was beaten in his
district. Defeat to me would have meant merely chagrin; to Kelly it
meant terrible material disaster. He had no money. Like every rigidly
honest man, he had found that going into politics was expensive and that
his salary as Assemblyman did not cover the financial outgo. He had lost
his practice and he had incurred the ill will of the powerful, so that
it was impossible at the moment to pick up his practice again; and
the worry and disappointment affected him so much that shortly after
election he was struck down by sickness. Just before Christmas some of
us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits that he and
his family would be put out into the street before New Year. This was
prevented by the action of some of his friends who had served with him
in the Legislature, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took
up the practice of his profession. But he was a broken man. In the
Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Democrats from
Brooklyn was the Speaker--Alfred C. Chapin, the leader and the foremost
representative of the reform Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported.
A few years later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brooklyn
on a reform Democratic ticket. Shortly after his election I was asked
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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