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 why should young men born to wealth and social position strive to thrust themselves in between the captains of industry and their political representatives? Possessing at the start the objects of the race, why should they contend? Politics was generally described as dirty and uninspiring; why should they subject themselves to its soil and fatigue? How some of them were answering such questions, Jacob Riis revealed in his life of Roosevelt:

Then came the impact upon the national character of the Rooseveltian personality, persuaded that there are a hundred more interesting things than making money, all "worth while:" hunting grizzlies, reforming, exploring, writing history, traveling, fighting Spaniards, developing a navy, governing men, reading Irish epics, building canals, swimming the Potomac with ambassadors, shooting lions, swapping views with kaisers, organizing new parties, and so on forever. Under the influence of this masterful force the unimaginative plutocratic