Why, again and again these very same machine politicians take just as good care of henchmen of the opposite party as of those of their own party.

In the underworld of politics the closest ties are sometimes those which knit together the active professional workers of opposite political parties.

A friend of mine in the New York Legislature--the hero of the alpha and omega incident--once remarked to me: "When you have been in public life a little longer, Mr.Roosevelt, you will understand that there are no politics in politics." In the politics to which he was referring this remark could be taken literally.
Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me, at about the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tammany man named Costigan, a good fellow according to his lights.

I had been speaking to him of a fight in one of the New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, moreover, was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions.

It had been an interesting fight in more than one way.