bout that,' and walked toward the door. He
said, 'You understand, the fight will begin tomorrow and will be carried
on to the bitter end.' I said, 'Yes,' and added, as I reached the
door, 'Good night.' Then, as the door opened my opponent, or visitor,
whichever one chooses to call him, whose face was as impassive and as
inscrutable as that of Mr. John Hamlin in a poker game, said: 'Hold on!
We accept. Send in so-and-so (the man I had named). The Senator is very
sorry, but he will make no further opposition!' I never saw a bluff
carried more resolutely through to the final limit." *

* Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 293-94.

One other Homeric fight with the machine was Roosevelt's portion during
his Governorship. This time it was not directly with the boss himself
but with the boss's liegemen in the Legislature. But the kernel of the
whole matter was the same--the selfish interests of big corporations
against the public good.

In those days corporations were by common practice privileged creatures.
They were accustomed to special treatment from legislatures and
administrations. But when Roosevelt was elected Governor, he was
determined that no corporation should get a valuable privilege from the
State without paying for it. Before long he had become convinced that
they ought also to pay for those which they already had, free gifts
of the State in those purblind days when corporations were young and
coddled. He proposed that public service corporations doing business on
franchises granted by the State and by municipalities should be
taxed upon the value of the privileges they enjoyed. The corporations
naturally enough did not like the proposal. But it was made in no spirit
or tone of antagonism to business or of demagogic outcry against those
who were prosperous. All that the Governor demanded was a square deal.
In his message to the Legislature, he wrote as follows:

"There is evident injustice in the light taxation of corporations. I
have not the slightest sympathy with the outcry against corporations as
such, or against prosperous men of business. Most of the great material
works by which the entire country benefits have been due to the
action of individual men, or of aggregates of men, who made money for
themselves by doing that which was in the interest of the people as a
whole. From an armor plant to a street railway, no work which is really
beneficial to the public can be performed to the best advantage of t