Out West, Back East, and in Europe, 1883-1900

Like many another New York youngster who had been raised on cowboy tunes, [Rollins]

delighted in the idea of being "out West" for the first time, and it was entirely consistent

with Sonny's personality to express how he felt about being West in music.

- Lester Koenig, liner notes for Way Out West



George W. Bush was born in upper-crust Connecticut, was raised in the white-collar cities of Midland and Houston, and spent most of his summers in Maine, yet he seldom misses an opportunity to appear in public wearing cowboy hats, belt buckles, denim, and boots. In early 2007, he defended his troop surge in Iraq beneath a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) on horseback in full Rough Rider regalia. The better to understand this Rovian piece of stagecraft, let's return to the affluent-cowboy phase of the 26th president's life.



After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1880, the blue-blooded New Yorker married the "extraordinarily attractive, slender, graceful" Alice Lee. At 23, he was elected as the youngest member of the New York State Assembly, where he worked as a progressive reformer of Tammany machine politics and the monopolistic practices of the Gilded Age, while also making time to hunt big game with his brother, Elliott. In 1883 he headed to Dakota, hoping to add a buffalo to his trophy case before the animal became extinct from over-hunting. He finally gunned one down in the Badlands and, while he was at it, bought a pair of ranches nearby before heading home to his pregnant wife in New York. The following Valentine's Day, however, the two women he loved most were taken from him – his mother, Mittie, died of typhoid fever, Alice of Bright's disease (nephritis of the kidneys) two days after giving birth to a daughter, who also was named Alice.



Shattered, Roosevelt returned to Albany after the funerals, throwing himself into his legislative duties. "It was a grim and evil fate," he wrote, "but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working." He worked nearly around-the-clock for weeks at a stretch, amending bills, giving speeches, and leading inspection tours of the Ludlow Street Jail. (Three decades later he delivered a 90-minute speech before seeking medical help after being shot in the chest by a would-be assassin.)



Once the '84 legislative session was over, he left Alice in the care of his sister Bamie and headed west to his ranches, seeking solitude in a more vigorous outdoor environment. Physical exercise, especially on horseback, became his religion, and he recommended "the strenuous life" as a cure for a variety of physical and spiritual ailments. He wound up writing several popular books, including Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and a four-volume history of the West, promoting its beauty and virtues – self-reliance, honor, determination – all of which made it, he said, a proving ground of American character.



The books prompted thousands of easterners to head to the plains. To accommodate the wealthier Ivy League cowboys, Dakota cattlemen happily accepted money in exchange for letting them work alongside men like Poker Jim on what came to be called "dude ranches." The catch was that aristocratic ranchmen, in Roosevelt's opinion, need not "undergo the monotonous drudgery attendant upon the tasks of the cowboy," at least not full time. Besides the chores of branding and herding, blue-blooded dudes needed time for reading and writing and hunting – or, in the case of Yale's Frederic Remington, for making sketches of bona fide cowboys to bring back to his Brooklyn studio.



Midwifed by the paintings, sculptures, and factual accounts of two aristocratic New Yorkers, the romantic myth of the cowboy was born. Cowboys, wrote Roosevelt, were "quiet, rather self-contained men, perfectly frank and simple, and on their own ground treat a stranger with the most whole-souled hospitality." Except, that is, when they went on their "sprees," during which they played poker, drank too much whiskey, and got into shootouts. Remington's painting A Misdeal shows four dead or wounded cowboys lying prostrate around a poker table, the air above it marbled with gunsmoke.



Re-entering politics back in New York, Roosevelt boldly sought access to the upper echelons of the Republican Party. He learned that its leaders met informally in a dingy room above a saloon on East 59th Street. The first time he showed up, he insisted on taking part in every discussion, despite being what they called a "mornin' glory," a well-to-do poseur who "looked lovely in the mornin' and withered up" quickly. "Some of them sneered at my black coat and tall hat. But I made them understand I should come dressed as I chose," he recalled. "Then after the discussions I used to play poker and smoke with them."



Such manly gambits helped him ascend with astonishing speed. In 1897 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by William McKinley. Spain was then reasserting control over its former Caribbean colonies, and many Americans, particularly merchant-class Methodists looking to broaden their markets, viewed this as an incursion into what had become "their" hemisphere. Roosevelt became their most articulate spokesman. When war was declared in 1898, he helped organize the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, which he nicknamed the Rough Riders. The regiment has been called "an American mosaic of cowboys, Indians, and aristocratic easterners, all of whom could ride and shoot well." Roosevelt never used a Spanish Most-Wanted poker deck to galvanize martial resolve, but he did say, "We had quite a number of professional gamblers, who, I am bound to say, usually made good soldiers." On July 1, 1898, he led them in the famous charges up Kettle and San Juan Hills during the war's climactic battle in Cuba. His rough-riding spirit is what President Bush – neither horseman nor soldier – was hoping to summon when he launched the surge beneath that portrait of Col. Roosevelt. The romance of the West, which ceased to be very wild around 1900, is what most folks in cowboy hats are hoping to recapture today.



Roosevelt returned from the "splendid little war" a national hero. In amazingly short order, he became governor of New York, McKinley's vice president, and after McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, America's youngest president. The hallmarks of his two terms were "busting" the trusts of corporate monopolies, establishing game preserves and national parks, negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War – for which he received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize – and promoting, above all, a "Square Deal." Inspired by a pair of silver scales presented to him by the black citizens of Butte, Montana, in May 1903, Roosevelt used the poker term to describe a series of policies designed to ensure that all Americans could earn a living wage and that the scales of justice would be put into balance for black and white, rich and poor citizens. "When I say I believe in a square deal," he explained, "I do not mean to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing."



While the younger Roosevelt and Remington were capturing the beauty and customs of the West, poker was emerging from grimy saloons and other dens of iniquity into well-upholstered clubs in their hometown and other big cities. The transition didn't always go smoothly, nor did players always get a square deal. On Sept. 30, 1880, The New York Times ran the following story:



A charge of gambling was preferred yesterday, in the Jefferson Market Police Court, against William Edwards, a showman, of Toledo, Ohio, by Eugene V. Davis, No. 246 East Broadway, a foreman in a cigar factory. Davis was recently introduced at the Brunswick Club, a social organization at No. 48 West Twenty-seventh-street, where draw poker is played. When Mr. Davis played there the game was limited, so that his losses were not great, but he remarked that he had very bad luck and had won only nominal amounts. On one occasion he had lost all his money, and staked and lost a diamond ring worth $75. … [He] remarked that the manager of the club, of whom he (Davis) speaks unkindly, stood behind him where he could have seen his cards. The game was disastrous to Davis, as he lost $50 in money and staked and lost a gold watch and chain and a diamond stud worth $200. Davis noticed that whenever he had good cards in his hand Edwards threw up his cards, and that whenever he had bad cards Edwards challenged him. Davis complained to Capt. Berghold, of the Twenty-ninth Precinct, who visited the Brunswick Club on Tuesday night and arrested Edwards, who gave up Davis's watch and chain and diamond pin and $85. In court Edwards characterized the action of Davis as ungentlemanly, as he had won on several occasions at draw poker, and took the money of those he played with. Justice Wandell decided to hold Edwards for trial in $1,000 bail, and to commit Davis as a witness to the House of Detention in default of $300 bail.



As more and more social clubs banned the game, dedicated card clubs met the demand for safe poker venues. On May 9, 1886, The Times reported:



It is not to play faro or roulette or any of the games of the regular gambling houses that these private card clubs are organized, but for the purpose of indulging in the popular American game of poker, which is prohibited in the majority of the social clubs as a source of trouble and scandal. High play is permitted in the Union, the Manhattan, the Knickerbocker and the Blossom Club, but in all other clubs poker is prohibited, particularly heavy play. There is, indeed, a "card" annex to nearly all the clubs, where those who wish to indulge in poker and heavy play do so outside the club, so that any trouble at the card table cannot involve the club or become a scandal within its walls. … Many of the professional "games" obtain immunity from the police by being dealt in so-called "clubs," but such are not to be confounded with these private card clubs organized for the purpose of privacy and security.



In 1887, The Times shook its finger at the trend: "Poker playing is found to be a source of trouble in any club that permits it. One after another all the social clubs have adopted ordinances prohibiting poker-playing in the card rooms. The last to do this is the Manhattan Athletic. The only clubs that now permit poker-playing are the Union, the Manhattan, the Blossom, and the New-Amsterdam."



Yet despite such editorial reprimands, the game thrived in New York and spread to old Amsterdam, too, as well as to London, Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. In August 1898, London's Telegraph reported:



Nothing that the Americans have introduced to Vienna has met with such an enthusiastic reception there as the game of poker. The four kings have more admirers than the four sisters Barrison, and the enterprising courage of the Americans meets with less notice than their ability to astound an adversary with an empty card. The passion for the game of poker has spread with such amazing rapidity that it recalls the hazard epoch, the game that at one time marked the dividing line between the Austrian aristocrat and his social inferiors. The difference now is that everybody plays. In the cafes the jeunesse doree join eagerly with merchants, lawyers, and clerks in the fascinating game. In private circles poker is played in the best houses by people in excellent positions, and what increases the evil is that it has been taken up by ladies. In Winter on the jours and in Summer at the fashionable baths and watering places, groups of ladies engage in their favorite game with all the ardor of those half-pay officers who, after the disbanding of Napoleon's armies, spent their days and nights at faro. … [T]he rage for poker spread amazingly; in fact, there are cafes whose proprietors who exist only on the proceeds of poker playing, as the charge for cards to each player is about 5s.



As comparable rages developed in other capitals, the game was already popular enough in California to be banned – unsuccessfully – by the penal code. At the other end of the country, poker thrived even in prison. In 1895, it was reported that Ludlow Street Jail officials not only "permitted the prisoners, criminal and civil, to play among themselves, but that the officials at times took a friendly hand, much to their own satisfaction and emolument."



In March 1900 a weeklong high-stakes game took place at the Waldorf-Astoria, having begun in a private railroad car from Chicago. The players included John W. Gates, president of American Steel and Wire; Chicago grain trader Joseph Leiter; L.L. Smith and John Gilbert, also of Chicago; and a Major Dougherty and another gentleman from New York. Six-figure amounts were said to be won or lost by most of the players, though the only one willing to talk to the press refused to give his name but said he won a mere $80,000. He also said Leiter lost $300,000 on the train but won most of it back at the Waldorf.



Two years earlier, Leiter had made about $3.35 million during the four-month war with Spain. As the price of wheat jumped 20 percent to $1.50 a bushel, he sold 775,000 bushels to Britain and 2 million to France. "The outbreak of the war saved Leiter the trials usually incident to the winding up of a bull deal in wheat," the Chicago Tribune reported. "Hostilities developed at just the right moment for him. A vast foreign demand for cash wheat immediately developed." Yet a few weeks later, after failing to corner the market, he had to be bailed out of a $7 million deal by his father. For those long in wheat, the war ended much, much too quickly.



Asked by a reporter in the middle of March 1900 for a comment about the game at the Waldorf, Leiter claimed he never played poker during Lent. Since Lent began on Ash Wednesday, March 7, and Easter fell on April 15, it seems that the sarcastic trader was being economical with the truth. There are no surviving photographs to determine whether he was wearing a cowboy hat.