The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [181]
In a piece that Roosevelt and Grinnell wrote together, the Yellowstone Protection Act of 1894 was held up as a model for policing wild refuges around the world. All the contributors to Hunting in Many Lands (except Elliott Roosevelt, whose posthumous contribution, “A Hunting Trip in India,” was embarrassingly antediluvian in attitude), promoted spirited ideas for global forestry and wildlife protection. Charles E. Whitehead of New York, for example, wrote that the “true hunter” took “more pleasure in watching the natural life around him than in killing the game that he meets.” His essay “Game Laws” recommended that the U.S. Army be authorized to try and punish poachers under martial law. “When we reflect how many and valuable races of animals in North America have become extinct or nearly so, as the buffalo and the manatee,” Whitehead fumed, “how many varieties of birds that afforded us food, or brightened the autumn sky with their migrations, have been annihilated, as have been the prairie fowl in the Eastern States and the passenger pigeon in all our States, the necessity of these laws appears urgent.”28
Most of the essays in Hunting in Many Lands made at least a passing reference to proper land and wildlife management. An argument was also made that all the other existing national parks besides Yellowstone—Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant—should likewise have game protection laws.* As for the coeditors themselves, Roosevelt argued that the reports of various hunters would help naturalists and zoologists better understand species. Grinnell endorsed Roosevelt’s participation in the Committee on Measurements exhibition, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City in May 1895, which rated the symmetry and coloration detail of big-game trophies.29 In the registration book Roosevelt, wanting to be associated with the American West, untruthfully gave his residence as “Medora N.D.” Along with other furrists and taxidermists, Roosevelt had submitted to the show numerous specimens, none of which drew more attention than his Texas tusked peccary head.
IV
That month also saw a career development: Roosevelt left the U.S. civil service to become a member of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City.† He had lived as a bureaucrat in the District of Columbia and was ready to return home. At the time, New York’s police department was perceived as untrustworthy and corrupt; the new commissioner would have to make public integrity his first priority. From day one, Roosevelt had a two-pronged approach to running the force: do away with bribery and force officers to abide by the law. Making the city’s police department more honest, however, proved difficult. The Bowery, in particular, a mile-long row of brothels, bars, and burlesque clubs, was the most notorious tenderloin district in America; the police patrolling the beat were mostly on the take. Always “prudish as a dowager,” as one biographer put it, Roosevelt thought prostitution caused moral debasement and was a menace to health.30 Roosevelt began making surprise visits to Bowery saloons, firing officers if they were found partaking in the draft beer and revelry.31 Nothing at the police department pre-Roosevelt, it seemed, had been done on the up-and-up. Roosevelt found that even instituting a standard for the promotion of police officers was fraught with controversy. “The public may rest assured that so far as I am concerned,” Roosevelt stated on accepting the appointment, “there will be no politics in the department and I know that I voice the sentiment of my colleagues in that respect. We are all activated by the desire to so regulate this department that it will earn the respect and confidence of the community.”32
Commissioner Roosevelt wasn’t just handcuff-happy in the Bowery or on the Lower East Side. Bitten by the temperance bug, he tried to enforce the moribund blue law against allowing saloons to be open on Sunday and went after nefarious dealers of exotic pets like a tyrant. Following the old Henry Bergh–ASPCA line, Roosevelt believed in ethical