Blaine, for he was a party man. The decision wounded many of his
friends. But it was the natural result of his political
philosophy. He believed in political parties as instruments for
securing the translation into action of the popular will. He
perceived that the party system, as distinguished from the group
system of the continental peoples, was the Anglo-Saxon, the
American way of doing things. He wanted to get things done. There
was only one thing that he valued more than achievement and that
was the right. Therefore, until it became a clean issue between
right and wrong, he would stick to the instrument which seemed to
him the most efficient for getting things done. So he stuck to
his party, in spite of his distaste for its candidate, and saw it
go down in defeat.

Roosevelt never changed his mind about this important matter. He
was a party man to the end. In 1912 he left his old party on what
he believed to be--and what was--a naked moral issue. But he did
not become an independent. He created a new party.



CHAPTER III. THE CHAMPION OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

The four years after the Cleveland-Blaine campaign were divided
into two parts for Roosevelt by another political experience,
which also resulted in defeat. He was nominated by the
Republicans and a group of independents for Mayor of New York.
His two opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, a business man of
standing who had been inveigled, no one knows how, into lending
respectability to the Tammany ticket in a critical moment, and