The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [261]
In more sophisticated parts of town, coffee-vendors found that a heavy infusion of cognac in every cup greatly increased their sales, while at a German Biergarten on Lexington Avenue, requests for “lemon soda,” “plain soda,” and “cold tea” were met with Rhine wine, gin, and whiskey respectively.99
Despite all these ingenious evasions, it soon became apparent that Roosevelt’s stranglehold on the saloons was beginning to hurt. The Wine, Beer, and Liquor Sellers’ Association, until recently the richest organization in New York, reported that one quarter of its members were facing bankruptcy for lack of Sunday sales; The New York Times estimated their average weekend loss as over $20,000 each.100 Economic shock-waves were felt all over the country. “In his eagerness to close the New York saloons,” remarked the Chicago Tribune, “Mr. Roosevelt has interfered with the hop-raisers of New York and Washington, with the corned-beef ranchers of the plains, the pigs’ feet producers of the West, and the barley-growers of the North. He is in a fair way to cost the American people millions.”101
Anguished protests came in from Tammany politicians, most notably from ex-Governor David B. Hill, now a United States Senator. In an open letter widely seen as a keynote for the upcoming Democratic state campaign, Hill excoriated New York’s “busybody and notoriety-seeking Police Commissioners” for “arbitrary, harsh, and technical” enforcement of the Sunday Excise Law. “A glass of beer with a few crackers in a humble restaurant is just as much a poor man’s lunch on Sunday as is Mr. Roosevelt’s elaborate champagne dinner at the Union League Club.”102
On 12 July a Democratic judge handed down the alarming decision that the law, interpreted literally, forbade the sale of all drinks on the Sabbath, including milk and lemonade. “ONLY WATER TO DRINK NOW,” mourned the Herald.103
Roosevelt’s chance to reply came on 16 July when he faced a large meeting of German-Americans in the Good Government Club at 134 East 115th Street. His audience represented the second-biggest ethnic community in New York City. From Houston Street north to Yorkville, from Third Avenue east to the river, one might walk for miles and not see so much as an English shop-sign. Here lived some 760,000 industrious, beer-drinking burghers, mostly middle-class, sentimentally attached to the Old World, yet fiercely loyal to their adopted country. Economically and politically their votes counted for as much as, if not more than, those of Irish-Americans. Their reaction to Roosevelt’s speech—his first major statement as president of the reform Police Board—was therefore eagerly awaited as an indication of how things might go at the next municipal election. Reporters came from as far away as Chicago and Boston to hear it.104
The evening began with a complaint, voiced in garbled, guttural English by City Coroner Hoeber, about the Police Board’s attitude to the “Continental Sunday.” Commissioner Parker (also on the platform) had said immigrants were “welcome” to obey American laws. “He has not got any business to velcome us! Ve are here by right!” Hoeber’s language grew so incoherent, as passion took him, that even his fellow Germans laughed; but Roosevelt listened with grave courtesy. Before giving his own prepared speech, he dispelled the specter of ethnic prejudice quickly and bluntly: “I care nothing