the extent to which the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code
should be allowed to encroach on politics and Big Business, and
who was hopelessly "altruistic" in caring for the poor and down
trodden and outcast. Even Platt knew that, while it would not be
safe for him to try to dominate the popular hero against his own
preference and that of the public, still to shelve Roosevelt in
the office of Vice-President would bring peace to the sadly
disturbed Boss, and would restore jobs to many of his greedy
followers. So he talked up the Vice-Presidency for Roosevelt, and
he let the impression circulate that in the autumn there would be
a new Governor.

Roosevelt, however, repeated to many persons the views he wrote
to Platt in the letter quoted above, and his friends and
opponents both understood that he wished to continue as Governor
for another two years, to carry on the fight against corruption,
and to save himself from being laid away in the Vice
Presidency--the receiving-tomb of many ambitious politicians. In
spite of the fact that within thirty-five years, by the
assassination of two Presidents, two Vice-Presidents had
succeeded to the highest office in the Nation, Vice-Presidents
were popularly regarded as being mere phantoms without any real
power or influence as long as their term lasted, and cut off from
all hopes in the future. Roosevelt himself had this notion. But
the Presidential conventions, with criminal disregard of the
qualifications of a candidate to perform the duties of President
if accident thrust them upon him, went on recklessly nominating
nonentities for Vice-President.

The following extract from a confidential letter by John Hay,