Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [43]
Charities like the Free Ice and Fresh Air funds worked in a vacuum, as officials did nothing. During the three years of this most recent economic crisis the city and state rejected all calls for poor relief. Any moves in the direction of helping the people, in defiance of the laissez-faire market economy smacked of socialism and anarchism. Business cycles corrected themselves, while families, churches, and ethnic fraternal organizations were expected to take care of their own.
On August 13, when the mayor finally called a meeting of his department heads to discuss the crisis, one suggestion was to distribute free ice to the poor—an idea proposed by the president of the Board of Police Commissioners, Theodore Roosevelt.
ROOSEVELT’S POLICE WERE kept busy during the early days of the heat wave. They were continually picking up unconscious men and women off the hot asphalt of the street and responding to cries of “Mad dog!” To the storeowners who complained about the rotting horse carcasses in front of their shops scaring away customers, all the police could say was “Wait.”
At Mulberry Street the Police Board continued to be deadlocked by the feud between Roosevelt and Parker, a constant source of irritation to the board’s president and to Mayor Strong. Meanwhile, in his crusade against the serving of alcohol on Sundays, Roosevelt faced a new challenge in the Raines law hotels. Dozens of saloons now called themselves “hotels” and rented rooms above the main bar.
The development was widely seen as seedy and unwelcome. Renting out the rooms above taverns struck many as a throwback to the days when prostitutes plied their trade only a stairway’s climb from the saloon floor, while others saw the rooms as encouraging gambling and other liquor-related vices. In an August 6 editorial, the New York Times complained that in one precinct where there had been only two hotels before passage of the Raines law, now there existed fifty-one “hotels” that sold liquor Sundays “and all hours of the night with impunity and with a noticeable increase of drunkenness and disorder.” Roosevelt may very well have had a personal motive in his campaign against Sunday liquor sellers. While no temperance advocate himself, he was something of a teetotaler, usually avoiding consumption of alcohol. This may have resulted from his younger brother Elliott’s death brought on by alcohol abuse only two years before. Drink had turned the once athletic and vivacious Elliott into a wasted man, and the death of his playmate from youth had dealt a crushing emotional blow to Roosevelt.
OBSERVERS ON THURSDAY, August 6, noted the bluish-gray pall that hung over the city, obscuring the hot sun and limiting visibility from the tops of New York’s tall buildings. It was the first time that year that such a “heat haze” had settled over the city. Its cause was the extreme humidity that resulted in so much suffering.
New Yorkers struggled day after day throughout the heat wave. How one coped often depended on one’s resources, as access to a cool place and to cool drinks was often too costly for the ordinary person. Many simply stripped down to the least amount of clothes socially acceptable, even if it meant wearing clothing not quite appropriate for Manhattan during a workday.
A reporter for the Herald described the sight of people trying to keep cool. “It was a blistering, sizzling day,” he wrote. “Humanity crawled into places where there were fans and iced drinks and stayed there. They put on their lightest clothes and took no heed of the remarks of the youngsters who decried duck trousers and yachting shoes. The negligee shirt was everywhere, and men with scrawny necks overcame their pride and wore turned down collars. The weather was a shade cooler than