Theodore Roosevelt [35]
Hall and the liquor-dealers, according to which the monthly blackmail paid to the force should be discontinued in return for political support." Croker and his pals, taking it as a matter of course that the public knew their methods, neither denied this incriminating statement nor thought it worth noticing. For a while all the saloons enjoyed equal immunity in selling drinks on Sunday. Then came Roosevelt and ordered his men to close every saloon. Many of the bar-keepers laughed incredulously at the patrol man who gave the order; many others flew into a rage. The public denounced this attempt to strangle its liberties and reviled the Police Chief as the would be enforcer of obsolescent blue laws. But they could not frighten Roosevelt: the saloons were closed. Nevertheless, even he could not prevail against the overwhelming desire for drink. Crowds of virtuous citizens preferred. an honest police force, but they preferred their beer or their whiskey still more, and joined with the criminal classes, the disreputables, and all the others who regarded any law as outrageous which interfered with their personal habits. Accordingly, since they could not budge Roosevelt, they changed the law. A compliant local judge discovered that it was lawful to take what drink you chose with a meal, and the result was that, as Roosevelt describes it, a man by eating one pretzel might drink seventeen beers.
Roosevelt himself visited all parts of the city and chiefly those where Vice grew flagrant at night. The journalists, who knew of his tours of inspection and were always on the alert for the picturesque, likened him to the great Caliph who in similar fashion investigated Baghdad, and they nicknamed him Haroun al Roosevelt. He had for his companion Jacob Riis, a remarkable Dane who migrated to this country in youth, got the position of reporter on one of the New York dailies, frequented the courts, studied the condition of the abject poor in the tenement-houses, and the haunts where Vice breeds like scum on stagnant pools, and wrote a book, "How the Other Half Lives," which startled the consciences of the well-to-do and the virtuous. Riis showed Roosevelt everything. Police headquarters were in Mulberry Street, and yet within a stone's throw iniquity flourished. He guided him through the Tenderloin District, and the wharves, and so they made the rounds of the vast city. More than once Roosevelt surprised a shirking patrolman on his beat, but his purpose they all knew was to see justice done, and to keep the officers of the Force up to the highest standard of duty.
One other anecdote concerning his experience as Police Commissioner I repeat, because it shows by what happy touches of humor he sometimes dispersed menacing clouds. A German Jew-baiter, Rector Ahlwardt, came over from Berlin to preach a crusade against the Jews. Great trepidation spread through the Jewish colony and they asked Roosevelt to forbid Ahlwardt from holding public meetings against them. This, he saw, would make a martyr of the German persecutor and probably harm the Jews more than it would help them. So Roosevelt bethought him of a device which worked perfectly. He summoned forty of the best Jewish policemen on the Force and ordered them to preserve order in the hall and prevent Ahlwardt from being interrupted or abused. The meeting passed off without disturbance; Ahlwardt stormed in vain against the Jews; the audience and the public saw the humor of the affair and Jew-baiting gained no foothold in New York City. Although Roosevelt thoroughly enjoyed his work as Police Commissioner, he felt rightly that it did not afford him the freest scope to exercise his powers. Much as he valued executive work, the putting into practice and carrying out of laws, he felt more and more strongly the desire to make them, and his instinct told him that he was fitted for this higher task. When, therefore, the newly elected Republican President, William McKinley, offered him the apparently modest position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he accepted it.
There was general grieving
Roosevelt himself visited all parts of the city and chiefly those where Vice grew flagrant at night. The journalists, who knew of his tours of inspection and were always on the alert for the picturesque, likened him to the great Caliph who in similar fashion investigated Baghdad, and they nicknamed him Haroun al Roosevelt. He had for his companion Jacob Riis, a remarkable Dane who migrated to this country in youth, got the position of reporter on one of the New York dailies, frequented the courts, studied the condition of the abject poor in the tenement-houses, and the haunts where Vice breeds like scum on stagnant pools, and wrote a book, "How the Other Half Lives," which startled the consciences of the well-to-do and the virtuous. Riis showed Roosevelt everything. Police headquarters were in Mulberry Street, and yet within a stone's throw iniquity flourished. He guided him through the Tenderloin District, and the wharves, and so they made the rounds of the vast city. More than once Roosevelt surprised a shirking patrolman on his beat, but his purpose they all knew was to see justice done, and to keep the officers of the Force up to the highest standard of duty.
One other anecdote concerning his experience as Police Commissioner I repeat, because it shows by what happy touches of humor he sometimes dispersed menacing clouds. A German Jew-baiter, Rector Ahlwardt, came over from Berlin to preach a crusade against the Jews. Great trepidation spread through the Jewish colony and they asked Roosevelt to forbid Ahlwardt from holding public meetings against them. This, he saw, would make a martyr of the German persecutor and probably harm the Jews more than it would help them. So Roosevelt bethought him of a device which worked perfectly. He summoned forty of the best Jewish policemen on the Force and ordered them to preserve order in the hall and prevent Ahlwardt from being interrupted or abused. The meeting passed off without disturbance; Ahlwardt stormed in vain against the Jews; the audience and the public saw the humor of the affair and Jew-baiting gained no foothold in New York City. Although Roosevelt thoroughly enjoyed his work as Police Commissioner, he felt rightly that it did not afford him the freest scope to exercise his powers. Much as he valued executive work, the putting into practice and carrying out of laws, he felt more and more strongly the desire to make them, and his instinct told him that he was fitted for this higher task. When, therefore, the newly elected Republican President, William McKinley, offered him the apparently modest position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he accepted it.
There was general grieving