The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [437]
101. Kipling, Something, 132; Kipling qu. Tha.II.333.
19: THE BIGGEST MAN IN NEW YORK
1. The following description of Mulberry Street is based on pictures and text in Shepp’s New York City Illustrated (Globe, Philadelphia, 1894); King’s Handbook of New York, 1893; Scrapbooks, “Mulberry Street,” in the New York Public Library; Riis, Jacob, The Making of an American (NY, 1902) passim; Ste. 197–265.
2. New York Evening Post, May 6, 1895.
3. Ste.257; see also Eve. Post, May 6, 1895; AND.30–3.
4. Ib.
5. Eve. Post, May 6, 1895. Physical descriptions taken from sketches in World, May 7; group portrait in Review of Reviews, May 20; various other pors. in TRB. Personal details from AND.16, 30–1; AND.Scr. For more on Grant, see Perling, I. J., Presidents’ Sons (New York, 1947), 178–79.
6. Ste.257–8; Brant, Donald Birtley, Jr., “TR as New York City Police Commissioner,” unpublished dissertation (Princeton, 1964) in TRB, 10; AND.32.
7. Andrews quoted Steffens’s story verbatim in his memoirs. One of the Republican members was by courtesy entitled to the presidency, since the appointing Mayor was of that party. According to Steffens in the Post that evening, Grant announced that he wanted the honor to go to TR; this was obviously at Strong’s request.
8. TR qu. Ber.47. Berman observes that such a statement at such a time, coming from so prominent a public figure, “clearly marked a radical departure” from old-style Police Headquarters policies. The hopes that it raised among reformers, however, were dashed by passage of the Bi-Partisan Police Act. (See below.)
9. Richardson, James F., The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (Oxford U. Press, 1970) 244. See ib. 214 ff., and the more recent scholarship of Ber. 35–41, for background to this bill.
10. TR was, by virtue of his sweeping investigation of the city government in 1884, intimately familiar with all phases of police operation. See, e.g., his “Machine Politics in New York City,” (1886) in TR.Wks.XII.30. “Polish” quote from ib., 123.
11. Ber.35–36; TR.wks.XII.123. TR and his three colleagues and the Chief all earned the same salary: $5,000 (New York Times, May 7, 1895). Richardson, Police, 212; AND.35; New York Herald and World, May 28.
12. Ber.51; Ste.221.
13. Richardson, Police, 210; Ber.51.
14. AND.7.
15. Ib., 19; 8; Ste.254; King’s Handbook; Shepp’s NYC, 410 ff; New York State, Report and Proceedings of the Senate Committee Appointed to Investigate the Police Department of the City of New York (Albany, 1895, reprinted Arno/N.Y.T., 1971) 28 ff.
16. Sun, May 12, 1895; Shepp’s NYC, 413; Report, 49; AND.7; TR.Wks.XIII. 119; TR.Auto. 178.
17. Report, 29; AND.7.
18. Report, 1–76; Ber.23–29; Brant, “TR, PC,” 5; Shepp’s NYC, 410–3.
19. AND.11.
20. TR.Wks.XIII. 119.
21. Report, 16; Shepp’s NYC, 413; AND.11.
22. Ste.256.
23. AND.18–9, 141 ff; see also Trib., May 23, 1895, on former election corruption.
24. Richardson, Police, 231; AND.13; Report, 16–19.
25. The Lexow Committee asserted that “honest elections had no existence, in fact, in the city of New York.” Qu. Richardson, Police, 233. Myers, Gustavus, The History of Tammany Hall (NY, 1901) 333; Connable, Alfred, and Silverfarb, Edward, Tigers of Tammany (NY, 1967) 197–214; Report, 15–61; AND.10.
26. Steffens, Autobiography, 258.
27. Ib.
28. Riis, Making, 70–3.
29. Rii.131; Riis, Making, 328; TR.Auto.174. “How the Other Half Lives had been to me both an enlightenment and an inspiration,” TR wrote in ib. “… I wished to help him in any practical way to try to make things a little better. I have always had a horror of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that does not result in action.”
30. Riis, Making, 328.
31. See Kaplan, Justin, Lincoln Steffens (Simon & Schuster, 1974) 57; Steffens, Autobiography, 223.
32. See Stein, Harry H., “Theodore Roosevelt and the Press: Lincoln Steffens,” Mid-America, 54.2 (Apr. 1972). This essay convincingly demonstrates TR’s mastery of the media by providing a documented case history