Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [13]
Gambling houses and brothels paid the police to ensure against raids. Saloons paid thousands of dollars to obtain a liquor license. Even local green grocers paid perhaps a dollar a day for the ability to stack their produce on the sidewalk. Just before Roosevelt took his position, an investigation had reported on the widespread corruption in the force. The Lexow Commission had concluded that the only remedy for such a rotten organization was to indict the entire police force. Upon taking office Roosevelt was able to force the resignation of the police chief as well as other corrupt officers. Accompanied by Jacob Riis, Roosevelt began to take midnight walks through the city, making sure that officers were on duty when and where they were supposed to be, instead of asleep, in taverns, or in brothels, “partly concealed by petticoats,” as one paper colorfully put it.
Roosevelt’s main and most difficult struggle would be to enforce the Sunday Excise Law that forbade the selling of liquor on Sunday. This was a state law that reflected the rural, upstate temperance vote and had long been flatly ignored in the city. Roosevelt himself was not a drinker, but even he believed the Sunday anti-liquor law to be a bad law. Nevertheless all laws needed to be enforced. Saloons were also the most public and profitable of the city’s illegal ventures, with ties both to the police force and to political corruption. Many saloon keepers were political bosses in the Democratic Tammany political organization, and saloons often doubled as unofficial Tammany headquarters. As a result, Roosevelt was not simply undertaking a moralist crusade against the evil drink but appearing to work in the interest of the Republican Party.
When Roosevelt took office in early 1895, there were between 12,000 and 15,000 saloons in New York City. By the end of June, Roosevelt had succeeded in closing 97 percent of the saloons on Sundays in accordance with the law, stopping the normal flow of 3 million glasses of beer. Roosevelt referred to the Sunday closing fight as a “war,” while the Times called it a “crusade.”
Whatever the label, it made Roosevelt the most unpopular man in New York. He was attacked by Tammany Democrats, of course, but also by German-Americans, who usually voted Republican and enjoyed a traditional drink of beer on Sundays. Some unknown drinker even sent Roosevelt a letter “bomb” that a postal clerk opened to find it packed only with sawdust.
When a U.S. senator from New York, Tammany Democrat David Hill, attacked Roosevelt for wasting police resources enforcing the Sunday law at the expense of fighting crime, Roosevelt responded in a speech to German-Americans, the second largest ethnic group in the city after the Irish. The law, Roosevelt said, was never meant to be honestly enforced:
It was meant to be used to blackmail and browbeat the saloon keepers who were not the slaves of Tammany Hall; while the big Tammany Hall bosses who owned saloons were allowed to violate the law with impunity and to corrupt the police force at will. With a law such as this enforced only against the poor or the honest man, and violated with impunity by every rich scoundrel and every corrupt politician, the machine did indeed seem to have its yoke on the neck of the people. But we threw off that yoke.
Republican senator from Massachusetts George Hoar wrote his congratulations to Roosevelt, saying, “Your speech is the best speech that has been made on this continent for thirty years. I am glad to know that there is a man behind it worthy of the speech.”
Roosevelt’s anti-saloon crusade, however, had proven widely unpopular with the mass of New York voters. Republican leaders blamed Roosevelt for the poor showing among city Republicans during the 1895 Assembly elections, and party leaders had not even allowed him to campaign for Republican candidates. Roosevelt despaired that his efforts at reform had destroyed any future career in the city. As always, Lodge encouraged the younger