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By Root 1029 0

Some were neatly dressed, but the majority wore ragged clothing. Half-fed children, barely able to drag themselves about, were sent by their parents to carry away ten pounds of ice. Nearly all of the applicants were children.” While condescending and nearing caricature, this description was not necessarily inaccurate. Not only were these children the city’s poorest, but after a long, hot summer day and without access to adequate bathing facilities, even better-off children might be seen in torn and dirty clothing. At the Madison Street station, which served the very poor and crowded Seventh Precinct, one observer estimated that five hundred children were waiting at the appointed hour of distribution. All carried tin pails and pans for the ice. When the ice was late arriving, what did these hundreds of children do? Of course, they began banging them together. The “din” that these “unruly” children made, the Times said, was “deafening.”

At the Seventh Precinct station house Roundsman Hulz was in charge of the distribution. A large man, “he showed that his heart was in proportion to his size.” From time to time Hulz lifted small children from the crowd and gave them their ice allotment to prevent them being crushed. Sometimes he addressed harsh words to children he knew did not qualify for free ice. One woman who applied for the ice Hulz recognized as being the proprietor of a “street stand” and the owner of a house. Police took to asking children what their fathers did for a living. “He’s a boss tailor,” one little girl replied. “Then you run home and tell him to buy his ice,” Hulz replied. “This ice is for poor people.” When Hulz asked one “neatly-dressed, but delicate-looking” little girl, “Where is your father?” the girl replied, “I don’t know, sir. We haven’t seen him for six months, and mother is sick and can’t work.” “Come right along,” Hulz said, and picked out a good-sized piece of ice for the girl.

With the ice again rapidly depleted, Roosevelt returned to his office on Mulberry Street. Back at police headquarters by 9:00 PM, he had a long interview with the reporter from the Evening Post. He recounted some of the scenes he had witnessed and some of the ideas he had put into practice. At the Elizabeth Street station, Roosevelt watched a police officer remove children from the line. In response to Roosevelt’s inquiry, the officer noted that the first boy was the son of a real-estate dealer living nearby, said to be worth $75,000. The second boy was the son of an “expressman,” a man employed receiving and delivering parcels, also reputed to own a considerable fortune. In a different precinct, Roosevelt watched as a “Hebrew woman” took away a ten-pound piece of ice. Not long after, however, the police in charge of the line recognized eight children, all belonging to that same woman. A policeman told Roosevelt that he believed they would try to sell the extra ice. All of this greatly offended the commissioner’s sense of honesty and fair play. The ice was meant for the poor, and here were rich people intentionally trying to cheat their way into a piece of free ice—and using their children to do so. Another family was trying to make a profit on the free ice, and in every case this would deprive some needy, even desperate family. At the end of a ten-day heat wave, this was no mere case of harmless dishonesty but deceit that might have life-threatening consequences.

No wonder that it was this pattern of deception in the ice distribution that Roosevelt moved quickly to address. He gave out new orders to the police going on duty at 1:00 that afternoon. Each patrolman would be issued twenty slips of papers, or “orders,” for free ice. The policeman would then give a slip of paper to the neediest people on their beats. No one would be served ice without a slip of paper. Roosevelt was very aware that this meant some people would leave the station houses that evening without ice. But for him it also meant a more orderly distribution system. “Order and Fair Play” might have been his motto, a guide for almost everything he did