Experienced politicians always warn young men who wish to rise in
politics, who wish to hold high office in the state or national
government, to keep out of city politics. It is a graveyard for
reputations, and it was that in 1895, when Roosevelt took charge
of the New York Police, even more than to-day.
Between the unreasonable reformers, who expect perfection, arrived
at in their own way; the sensible folk who demand an honest
government; the lax and easy-going people who do not care how much
rottenness there is about, so that it is kept partly covered up
(and this is one of the largest classes) and the plain criminals
who are out for graft and plunder, the city office-holder is torn
in a dozen ways at once.
If he is dishonest or weak, he goes under immediately. If he is
honest, but lacking in perfect courage, he is nearly useless. And
if he is both honest and brave, but has not good brains, is not
able to use his mind quickly and well, he is either helpless, or
soon placed in a position where he seems to have been
dishonorable. For, of course the first method which a crooked man
uses to destroy his honest opponent, is to try to make him look
crooked, too. Often during his life Roosevelt insisted upon the
fact that a man in public life must not only be honest, but that
he must have a back-bone and a good head into the bargain.
Nothing but a sense of public duty, nothing but a desire to help
the cause of better government, could have made a man take the
Police Commissionership in 1895. Mayor Strong, on a Reform ticket,
had beaten Tammany Hall. He wanted an able and energetic man and
so sent for Roosevelt. The condition of the Police Department
sounds more like a chapter from a dime novel gone mad, than from
any real state of things which could exist in a modern city. Yet
it did exist.
The police were supposed to protect the city against crime. What
they really did was to stop some of the crime--when the criminal
had no "pull"--and to protect the rest of it. The criminal handed
over a certain amount of his plunder to the police, and they let
him go on with his crime. More than that, they saw that no one
bothered him. There was a regular scale of prices for things
varying all the way from serious crime down to small offenses. It
cost more to be a highway robber, burglar, gun-man or murderer,
for instance, than merely to keep a saloon open after the legal
time for closing. A man had to pay more for running a big
gambling-house, than simply for blocking the side-walk with
rubbish and ash-cans.
Roosevelt found that most of the policemen were honest, or wished
to be honest. But, surrounded as they were by grafters, it was
almost impossible for a man to keep straight. If he began by
accepting little bribes, he ended, as he rose in power, by taking
big ones, and finally he was in partnership with the chief
rascals. The hideous system organized by the powerful men in
Tammany Hall spread outward and downward, and at last all over the
city. Roosevelt did not stop all the crime, of course, nor leave
the city spotless when he ended his two years service. But he did
make it possible for one of his chief opponents, one of the
severest of all critics, Mr. Godkin, a newspaper editor, to write
him, at the end of his term of office:
"In New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American
to-day is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the country
the spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of
high character in the most efficient way amid a thousand
difficulties. As a lesson in politics, I cannot think of anything
more instructive." [Footnote: Thayer, "Theodore Roosevelt," p.
106.]
How did he do this? First, he tried to keep politics out of the
police-force,--to appoint men because they would make good
officers, not because they were Republicans or Democrats. Next, he
tried to reward and promote policemen who had proved themselves
brave,--who had saved people in burning houses or from drowning,
or had arrested violent men at great danger to themselves. This is
commonly done in the New York Police Department to-day: it was not
so common before 1895. Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners
found one old policeman who had saved twenty-five people from
drowning and two or three from burning buildings. They gave him
his first promotion. He began to have the Department pay for a
policeman's uniform when it was torn in making an arrest or
otherwise ruined in the performance of duty. Before, the policeman
had had to pay for a new uniform himself. He had each policeman
trained to use a pistol, so that if he had to fire it at a
criminal, he would hit the criminal, and not somebody else. He did
his best to stop the custom of selling beer and whiskey to
children. Finally he stopped disrespect for law by having law
enforced, whether people liked it or not.
Of course, this got him into hot water. One of our worst faults in
America lies in passing a tremendous number of laws, and then
letting them be broken. In many instances the worst troubles are
with laws about strong drink. People in the State, outside of New
York City, and some of those in the City, wished to have a law to
close the saloons on Sunday. So they passed it. But so few people
in the City really wished such a law, so many of them wished to
drink on Sunday, that the saloons stayed open, and the saloon-
keepers paid bribes to the police for "protection." The result was
not temperance, but the opposite. Moreover it led to disrespect
for the law, and corruption for the police. It was not
Commissioner Roosevelt's business whether the law was a wise one
or not, but it was his business to enforce it.
He enforced it, and had the saloons closed. As he said: "The howl
that rose was deafening. The professional politicians raved. The
yellow-press surpassed themselves in clamor and mendacity. A
favorite assertion was that I was enforcing a 'blue law,' an
obsolete law that had never before been enforced. As a matter of
fact, I was enforcing honestly a law that had hitherto been
enforced dishonestly." [Footnote: "Autobiography," p. 210.]
In the end, those who wished to drink on Sundays found a way to do
it, and the law intended to regulate drinking habits failed, as
such laws nearly always have done. A judge decided that as drink
could be served with meals, a man need only eat one sandwich or a
pretzel and he could then drink seventeen beers, or as many as he
liked. But the result of Roosevelt's action had nearly stopped
bribe-giving to the police. So there was something gained.
Roosevelt went about the city at night, sometimes alone, sometimes
with his friend Jacob Riis, a reporter who knew about police work
and the slum districts of the city. If he caught policemen off
their beat, they were ordered to report at his office in the
morning and explain. When his friends were dancing at fashionable
balls, he was apt to be looking after the police outside.
From about this time, Roosevelt began to be known all over the
United States. He had been heard of ever since he was in the
Assembly, but only by those who follow politics closely. Now, New
York newspapers, with their cartoons, began to make him celebrated
everywhere. The fact that when he spoke emphatically, he showed
his teeth for an instant, was enlarged upon in pictures and in
newspaper articles, and it became connected with him henceforth.
We demand amusing newspapers; we like the fun in every subject
brought out as no other nation does. And we get it. Our newspapers
are by far the brightest and most readable in the world. But we
have to pay for it, and we often pay by having the real truth
concealed from us in a mass of comedy. Newspapers seize upon a man
or woman who has something amusing in his life, manner, or speech,
and play upon that peculiarity until at last the true character of
the person is hidden.
This happened with Roosevelt. About the time of his Police
Commissionership, the newspaper writers and artists began to
invent a grotesque and amusing character called "Teddy," who was
forever snapping his teeth, shouting "Bully!" or rushing at
everybody, flourishing a big stick. This continued for years and
was taken for truth by a great many people. To this day, this
imaginary person is believed in by thousands. And in the meantime,
the genuine man, a brave high-minded American, loving his country
ardently, and serving her to the utmost of his great strength and
ability, was engaged in his work, known by all who had personal
contact with him to be stern indeed against evil-doers, but tender
and gentle to the unfortunate, to women and children and to
animals.
