So Roosevelt was nominated, made a gruelling campaign, was
elected by a small but sufficient majority, in a year when any
other Republican candidate would probably have been "snowed
under," and became Governor seventeen years after he entered
public life. He was now forty years old.

The governorship of Theodore Roosevelt was marked by a deal of
fine constructive legislation and administration. But it was even
more notable for the new standard which it set for the
relationship in which the executive of a great State should stand
to his office, to the public welfare, to private interests, and
to the leaders of his party. Before Roosevelt's election there
was need for a revision of the standard. In those days it was
accepted as a matter of course, at least in practice, that the
party boss was the overlord of the constitutional representatives
of the people. Appointments were made primarily for the good of
the party and only incidentally in the public interest. The
welfare of the party was closely bound up with the profit of
special interests, such as public service corporations and
insurance companies. The prevalent condition of affairs was
shrewdly summed up in a satiric paraphrase of Lincoln's
conception of the American ideal: "Government of the people, by
the bosses, for the special interests." The interests naturally
repaid this zealous care for their well-being by contributions to
the party funds.

Platt was one of the most nearly absolute party bosses that the
American system of machine politics has produced. In spite of the
fair warning which he had already received, both directly from