From Dudeto Cowboy

A HISTORY OF US

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The Badlands is ahigh, dry region with deepgullies caused by heavyrain. That rain is nature'sjoke, because normallythere isn't enough to makemuch of anything grow.When the rain does come,it is sometimes so hard itwashes the land away.Badlands aren't good foragriculture or pasture, butthey are hauntingly beauti-ful and full of tall earthcolumns and platforms.

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The North Dakota cowboys chuckled when theysaw the young dude who had come from the Eastto hunt and become a rancher, His name was Theo-dore Roosevelt, and he wore a huge sombrero, afringed and beaded buckskin shirt, fringed leatherpants, silver spurs engraved with his initials, and al-ligator boots. Tucked in his belt were a knife andscabbard, custom-made at Tiffany's, the finest jew-elry store in the nation. A silk cord hung from histhick glasses. He was skinny, with a squeaky voiceand a big toothy grin, and he carried books underhis arm. One day out on the range, the cowboys fig-ured, and the city slicker would hightail it back East.

So a guide took him buffalo hunting. They weregone seven days, riding the wildest, loneliest,most difficult trails the Dakota Badlands had tooffer. It rained most of the time; the days werehot and the nights were frigid. They were charged

by a wounded buffalo, their food ran out, the dude fell into a bed ofcactus, wolves frightened their horses, the horses had to be chased,and they woke one cold morning to find themselves sleeping in fourinches of water. The guide, Joe Ferris, was close to collapse from ex-haustion. But the worse things got, the more the dude seemed toenjoy himself. "By Godfrey, but this is fun!" was what he kept saying.

"You just couldn't knock him out of sorts," said Ferris, who wassurprised that "he had books with him and would read at oddtimes." When Roosevelt finally shot a buffalo he jumped, danced,and whooped. "I never saw anyone so pleased in all my life," Ferrisremembered later. "I was plumb tired out," he added.

Theodore Rooseveltin a studio photo,the Tiffany knife andsheath in his belt

AN AGE OF EXTREMES

Roosevelt had dropped his childhood name, Teedie, and was nowsigning his letters "Thee," or "Ted," or "Theodore." Later, when he-became president, people would call him "TR," or "Teddy." But hewas little Teedie when he first dreamed of the West after reading ad-venture books by James Fenimore Cooper. He longed for adventurehimself. He went west for another reason, though. He went to forgetand to begin again. He was 26, and he had lived through a series oftragedies that no young man should have to face.

The first tragedy came when he was a college student. He studiedhard and passed the entrance exam for Harvard. He expected to be a sci-entist. Before he graduated, he began work on a book about the navy inthe War of 1812. Then his beloved father-the man all the family called"Greatheart"-died. That changed his life, and his career, too. He decid-ed to go into politics-to become a responsible citizen, as he believedhis father would have wished him to do. Few people with his wealth andeducation entered politics. They were apt to look down their noses atthe people who ran the the country. Roosevelt was determined to be areforming politician. When friends asked why he had gone into politics,he said he wished to be part of the governing-not the governed---class.

So when he left college, he became a legislator in New York's Assem-bly. He did something else. He got married, to sweet-natured Alice Lee.She was like a fairy-tale bride: blue-eyed, blonde, and beautiful. Theywere enchantingly happy. And then, on the same day-it was Valentine'sDay, 1884-in the same house, Alice died giving birth to a daughter, andMittie, Theodore's mother, died of typhoid fever. Mittie was 48; Alice, 22.

In his diary entry for that day, Roosevelt drew a dark X andwrote, "The light has gone out of my life." Three days later, hechristened the baby Alice Lee and sorrowfully wrote in his diary,"my life has now been lived out." TR had no clue as to the full andproductive life ahead of him; what he did have was resilience and"Nowhere else does one seem so far from energy, so he went westall mankind,"TRwroteof the plains. and threw himself into

cowboy life. Later on,he wrote, "There wereall kinds of things ofwhich I was afraid atfirst, ranging from griz-zly bears to 'mean'horses and gunfighters;but by acting as if I wasnot afraid I gradually

~ ceased to be afraid."

Life, Not Legalism

After listening to Sam-uel Gompers, Con-

gress passed a law pro-hibiting the making ofcigars in tenement "sweat-shops." (It was 1882 andGrover Cleveland waspresident.) The $~premeCourt soon ruled the lawunconstitutional. "It can-not be perceived howthe cigarmaker is to beimproved in his health orhis morals by forcinghim from his home ... toply his trade elsewhere."

Reformer TheodoreRoosevelt had visit-

ed some of those sweat-shops.~ln his autobloqra-phY he wrote, "It wasthis case which firstwaked me to a dim andpartial understanding ofthe fact that the courtswere not necessarily thebest judges of whatshould be done to bettersocial and industrialconditions. The judgeswho rende.redthis deci-sion were well-meaningmen. They knew nothingwhatever of tenement-house conditions; theyknew legalism, not life.This decision completelyblocked tenement-housereform legislation in NewYorkfor a score of years."

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Here is one of his adventures, in his own words:I was out after lost horses ... it was late in the evening when Ireached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I cameup, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and itwas a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, includingthe bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who aremaking believe to like what they don't like. A shabby individual in abroad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and downthe floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently beenshooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face .

.. .As soon as he saw me he hailed me as "Four Eyes," in referenceto my spectacles, and said, "Four Eyes is going to treat." I joined inthe laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escapenotice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as ajest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning overme, a gun in each hand, using very foul language .... In response tohis reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, "Well,if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one sideof the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out,and then again with my right. He fired the guns las] he wentdown ... he was senseless. I took away the guns.

The skinny dude with the glasses had been on the boxing team atHarvard. Next day the bully left town on a freight train.

Another time, Roosevelt helped capture three thieves. Then hewalked them 45 miles and turned them over to a surprised sheriff.

TR learned to rope steers, wrestle calves, and ride bucking ponies.He could ride 100 miles a day and then sit up all night on watch. If hefound someone who could talk about books or ideas, he would talkand talk and talk. A Scotsman who was in North Dakota in those daysremembered him as "the most remarkable man I ever met."

Roosevelt fell in love with the bleak, haunting Dakota Badlands.He called it "the romance of my life." It was a strange place of cliffs,ravines, and flat tablelands where survival wasn't easy-even forbirds and animals. He may have understood that his was the lastgeneration that would enjoy that frontier in its natural state.

When Roosevelt became president he did everything he could tosave wilderness areas for future generations. He increased the nation-al forests by 40 million acres, created five national parks, 16 nationalmonuments, four national game refuges, and 51 bird sanctuaries. Afterhiking with John Muir, he made sure that Yosemite's forests of giantsequoia and redwood trees were saved "for the people's children and

A HISTORY OF US

When he was presi-dent, Roosevelt expectedhis militarycommanderstobe fit. He asked that eachride 100miles in threedays.To show them how, thepresident did it in one day.

"I do not think ever a manloved a woman more than Ilove her," TR wrote of Alice."For a year and a quarter now(even when hunting) I havenever gone to sleep or wakedup without thinking of her."

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children's children." He helped make conservation a popular idea.His first trips west did exactly what they were meant to do. They

helped him begin his life again. When he went back east, he wasready to accept a new job, as police commissioner of New York.(Some people said roping steers was easier.) Now he was out walkingthe streets of New York with writers Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens.At night he could be seen in dangerous areas, making sure the policewere doing their job. No police commissioner had done that before.

And he married a childhood playmate, Edith Carow. Togetherthey raised a noisy, happy family of six children.

McKinley the waiter takes Uncle Sam's imperialist order.

Expansionism

Expansionism is a big word, which is appropri-ate, because it means the practice (by a nation)

of getting bigger. Should nations grow and grow asmuch as they can? In the past, many nations have feltthe only way to be great was to do just that How doesa country grow? Usually by getting land from others.

Isn't that wrong? Well, in the past, many goodpeople believed that they were helping or improvingthe other nations that they grabbed. Besides, it wasthe way nations had always become powerful. At thetum of the century, many Americans thought expan-sion would bring glory, prestige, and power to theUnited States. They believed America's ideals wereso great that they should be forced on other people.It was a popular way to think. Expansionism was

Measured by McKinley for a suit stuffed with newterritories, Uncle Sam ignores anti-imperialist Carl Schurz.

Teddy (then president) withJohn Muir at Yosemite.

also called imperialism. Theodore Roosevelt was animperialist He always liked to do things in a big way.

But some people-like Mark Twain, Carl Schurz,and ex-President Cleveland-thought differently.

They believed it was America's destiny to be differentfrom other nations. They thought the United Statesshould stick to its own affairs. Thomas Jefferson said,"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in themind of every American, it is that we should havenothing to do with conquest." And they rememberedGeorge Washington's advice to the nation: "The greatrule of conduct for us in regard to foreign relations is,in extending our commercial relations to have withthem as little political connection as possible."

The people who were against expansion werecalled anti-imperialists. Their view was not very popu-lar. America's citizens would do a lot of thinking about"imperialism" and "isolation" and ''world responsibili-ty." Hwould be difficuH to find the right road.