the best judges of what should be done to better social and
industrial conditions."

When, a quarter, of a century later, Roosevelt left the
Presidency and became Contributing Editor of The Outlook, almost
his first contribution to that journal was entitled "A Judicial
Experience." It told the story of this law and its annullment by
the court. Mr. William Travers Jerome wrote a letter to The
Outlook, taking Roosevelt sharply to task for his criticism of
the court. It fell to the happy lot of the writer as a cub editor
to reply editorially to Mr. Jerome. I did so with gusto and with
particularity. As Mr. Roosevelt left the office on his way to the
steamer that was to take him to Africa to hunt non-political big
game, he said to me, who had seen him only once before: "That was
bully. You have done just what my Cabinet members used to do for
me in Washington. When a question rose that demanded action, I
used to act. Then I would tell Root or Taft to find out and tell
me why what I had done was legal and justified. Well done,
coworker." Is it any wonder that Theodore Roosevelt had made in
that moment another ardent supporter?

Those first years in the political arena were not only a fighting
time, they were a formative time. The young Roosevelt had to
discover a philosophy of political action which would satisfy
him. He speedily found one that suited his temperament and his
keen sense of reality. He found no reason to depart from it to
the day of his death. Long afterward he told his good friend
Jacob Riis how he arrived at it. This was the way of it:

"I suppose that my head was swelled. It would not be strange if