Roosevelt consented to run for a third term and he was elected in spite of the opposition of the various elements which united to defeat him. Such a man was too. dangerous to be acceptable to Jay Gould and the "interests," to Black-Horse Cavalry, and to gangs of all kinds who made a living, directly or indirectly, by office-holding. His friends urged him for the speakership; but this was asking too much of the Democratic majority, and besides, there were Republicans who had winced under his scourge the year before and were glad enough to defeat him now. Occasionally, some kind elderly friend would still attempt to show him the folly of his ways, and we hear reports of one gentleman, a member of the Assembly and an "old friend," who told him that the great concern in life was Business, and that lawyers and judges, legislators and Congressmen, existed to serve the ends of Business. "There is no politics in politics," said this moral guide and sage. But he could not budge the young man, who believed that there are many considerations more important than the political. During this third year, he made a straight and gallant fight to improve the condition under which cigars were made in New York City. By his own investigation, he found that the cigar makers lived in tenements, in one room, perhaps two, with their families and often a boarder; these made the cigars which the public bought, in ignorance of the facts. Roosevelt proposed that, as a health measure which would benefit alike the cigar-makers and the public, this evil practice be prohibited and that the police put a stop to it. His bill passed in 1884, but the next year the Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional, because it deprived the tenement-house people of their liberty and would injure the owners of the tenements if they were not allowed to rent their property to these tenants. In its decision, the court indulged in nauseating sanctimony of this sort: " It cannot be perceived how the cigar-maker is to be improved in his health, or his morals, by forcing him from his home and its hallowed associations and beneficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere." This was probably not the first time when Roosevelt was enraged to find the courts of justice sleekly upholding hot-beds of disease and vice, on the pretense that they were protecting liberty. Commenting on this episode, Mr. Washburn well says: "As applied to the kind of tenement I have referred to, this reference to the 'home and its hallowed associations' seems grotesque or tragic depending upon the point of view."* * Washburn, 11. Amid work of this kind, fighting and fearless, constantly adding to his reputation among the good as a high type of reformer, and adding to the detestation in which the bad held him, he completed his third term. He resolutely refused to serve again and declined the offers which were pressed upon him to run for Congress; nor did he accept a place on the Republican National Committee.