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ROOSEVELT’S ASTONISHING national prestige, so at odds with his unpopularity in New York, continued to grow. “The whole country, it seemed, was talking about Theodore Roosevelt,” wrote Avery Andrews. “It liked what he was doing.” Word of his exploits spread even to London, where the Times described him as a “police Rhadamanthus” ruling Mulberry Street “with undisputed sway.” His three colleagues, especially the excellent Parker, were supporting him to a man, and Acting Chief Conlin, although nominally in independent control of the force, was content to obey his orders. Crimes were down, arrests up, corruption clearly on the wane;121 Roosevelt had every reason to congratulate himself, and did not hesitate to do so.

Familiar signs of self-satisfaction appeared in his behavior. He began to talk in private as if he were on a platform, pausing after every sentence to watch its effect on the listener.122 His youthful love of flamboyant dress was revived in a summer outfit, the like of which had never been seen at Police Headquarters. It consisted of a straw English boater, a pink shirt, and a black silk cummerbund whose tasseled ends dangled down to his knees.123 “Bustling, jocose, and rubicund,” he would burst into Board meetings and impulsively sweep up piles of documents awaiting action. “These relate to civil service matters. With the Board’s permission I will decide them all.”124 The word “I” invaded his speeches to such an extent that the Herald took to reproducing it in bold type: the effect on a column of gray newsprint was of buckshot at close range.125

The success of Roosevelt’s crusade was helped by his early insistence that he was acting out of duty, not bluenosed morality. But the temptation to preach, always strong in him, became irresistible on 7 August, when he appeared at the Catholic Total Abstinence Union’s national convention in Carnegie Hall. Sharing the platform with him were Mayor Strong, Commissioner Parker, and a phalanx of clergymen, headed by Archbishop Corrigan of New York. “Big Tim” O’Sullivan, a State Senator from Tammany Hall, represented the forces of iniquity.126

After a mass chorus of “While We Are Marching for Temperance,” sung to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia,” Senator O’Sullivan rose to give the first speech. He had not joined in the singing, and proceeded to make plain his contempt for “the Puritan’s gloomy Sabbath.” To an uproar of hisses and boos, he declared that the Excise Law discriminated against “the orderly citizen who drinks in moderation,” while encouraging the real drunkard to lay in supplies of hard liquor, and souse in front of his family.

Roosevelt’s face, during this speech, was a study of majestic disapproval. Throwing aside his prepared text, he followed O’Sullivan to the lectern and soothed the raging audience with a full display of his teeth. “I want to express my gratitude to the Catholic Church,” he intoned, “because it stands manfully for temperance, and for a day of rest and innocent enjoyment.” The next thirty minutes were devoted to a conversational defense of himself and his policies, remarkable for the roars of applause that greeted every quiet cadence. For the most part it was standard stuff, but Roosevelt inserted paragraphs of temperance rhetoric which worked his seven thousand listeners into a frenzy of righteous fervor. Senator O’Sullivan was mentioned only occasionally, in tones of sympathetic sorrow, as a lost sheep to be mourned by the rest of the flock. “Rub it in to him, Teddy,” yelled a voice, and Roosevelt swung into his peroration:

I hope to see the time when a man will be ashamed to take any enjoyment on Sunday which shall rob those who should be dearest to him, and are dependent on him, of the money he has earned during the week; when a man will be ashamed to take a selfish enjoyment, and not to find some kind of pleasure which he can share with his wife and children.127

“Never in my life,” he wrote afterward, “did I receive such an ovation.