36 EXPOSING GRAFT IN NEW YORK STATE 
campfire, he read in a newspaper sent him from New York that a con¬ 
vention of independent citizens had chosen him as their nominee for 
Mayor of that city. That night he hung up his rifle, packed his trunk, 
and bade good-bye to his life on the plains, starting East to plunge 
once more into the troubled pool of politics. 
There were two other candidates for the office, Abram S. 
Hewitt, the choice of Tammany, and Henry George, the single-tax 
advocate, the nominee of the United Labor party. The citizens who 
nominated Roosevelt did so because they wanted a hard fighter and 
knew they would have one in him. His fight was vigorous, but the 
opposing forces were too strong, and Hewitt was chosen with a 
plurality vote of about 22,000. He had “ruined himself’ politically, 
some said, as others had said he had “ruined himself” in his fight with 
the Organization in the Assembly. He was one who did not stay 
“ruined.” In the early eighties Andrew D. White, President of Cornell 
University, said to his class: 
“Young gentlemen, some of you will enter public life. I call your 
attention to Theodore Roosevelt, now in our Legislature. He is on the 
right road to success. It is dangerous to predict a future for a young 
man, but let me tell you that if any man of his age was ever pointed 
straight for the Presidency, that man is Theodore Roosevelt.” 
Hazardous as Mr. White deemed the prophecy, it proved a true 
one. 
