Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/33

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expenses right away now. I have always stood for that course as the only one to give the poor man a fair chance in politics.

Your other idea is new, but I have long been feeling my way to the same conclusion. A lawyer is not like a doctor. No real good for the community comes from the development of legalism, from the development of that kind of ability shown by the great corporation lawyers who lead our bar; whereas good does come from medical development. The high-priced lawyer means, when reduced to his simplest expression, that justice tends to go to the man with the longest purse. But the proposal is such a radical one that I do not know how it would be greeted, and it is something we will have to fight for later.

2em

Late in September, during a campaign tour of the West, Colonel Roosevelt spent a Sunday evening at Oak Hall. The subject of campaign contributions came up, and the candidate became reminiscent, recounting his first experience as governor of New York with campaign contributions. It was an incident, he said, that might readily be misconstrued and so he had not discussed it publicly.

Soon after he was elected governor of New York, he had discovered that the street railways were paying almost no taxes. Accordingly he took steps to introduce a franchise tax bill into the legislature. Mr. Odell at once came to him and told him that he was following in the footsteps of Bryan and "Potato" Pingree, which was the most severe condemnation at that time. That warning having no effect, Mr. Platt came to him and said, "Governor, you can't do this. Don't you know that the Whitney-Ryan combination was one of the heaviest contributors to your campaign fund?"