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Theodore Roosevelt and His Times
Chapter IV. Haroun al Roosevelt
by Howland, Harold
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In 1895, at the age of thirty-six, Roosevelt was asked by Mayor
Strong of New York City, who had just been elected on an
anti-Tammany ticket, to become a member of his Administration.
Mayor Strong wanted him for Street Cleaning Commissioner.
Roosevelt definitely refused that office, on the ground that he
had no special fitness for it, but accepted readily the Mayor's
subsequent proposal that he should become President of the Police
Commission, knowing that there was a job that he could do.
There was plenty of work to be done in the Police Department. The
conditions under which it must be done were dishearteningly
unfavorable. In the first place, the whole scheme of things was
wrong. The Police Department was governed by one of those
bi-partisan commissions which well-meaning theorists are wont
sometimes to set up when they think that the important thing in
government is to have things arranged so that nobody can do
anything harmful. The result often is that nobody can do anything
at all. There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong to
one party and two to the other. There was also a Chief of Police,
appointed by the Commission, who could not be removed without a
trial subject to review by the courts. The scheme put a premium
on intriguing and obstruction. It was far inferior to the present
plan of a single Commissioner with full power, subject only to
the Mayor who appoints him.
But there is an interesting lesson to be learned from a
comparison between the New York Police Department as it is today
and as it was twenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of
organization was thoroughly bad--and the department was at its
high-water mark of honest and effective activity. Now the scheme
of organization is excellent--but the less said about the way it
works the better. The answer to the riddle is this: today the New
York police force is headed by Tammany; the name of the
particular Tammany man who is Commissioner does not matter. In
those days the head was Roosevelt.
There were many good men on the force then as now. What Roosevelt
said of the men of his time is as true today: "There are no
better men anywhere than the men of the New York police force;
and when they go bad it is because the system is wrong, and
because they are not given the chance to do the good work they
can do and would rather do." The first fight that Roosevelt found
on his hands was to keep politics and every kind of favoritism
absolutely out of the force. During his six years as Civil
Service Commissioner he had learned much about the way to get
good men into the public service. He was now able to put his own
theories into practice. His method was utterly simple and
incontestably right. "As far as was humanly possible, the
appointments and promotions were made without regard to any
question except the fitness of the man and the needs of the
service." That was all. "We paid," he said, "not the slightest
attention to a man's politics or creed, or where he was born, so
long as he was an American citizen." But it was not easy to
convince either the politicians or the public that the Commission
really meant what it said. In view of the long record of
unblushing corruption in connection with every activity in the
Police Department, and of the existence, which was a matter of
common knowledge, of a regular tariff for appointments and
promotions, it is little wonder that the news that every one on,
or desiring to get on, the force would have a square deal was
received with scepticism. But such was the fact. Roosevelt
brought the whole situation out into the open, gave the widest
possible publicity to what the Commission was doing, and went
hotly after any intimation of corruption.
One secret of his success here as everywhere else was that he did
things himself. He knew things of his own knowledge. One evening
he went down to the Bowery to speak at a branch of the Young
Men's Christian Association. There he met a young Jew, named
Raphael, who had recently displayed unusual courage and physical
prowess in rescuing women and children from a burning building.
Roosevelt suggested that he try the examination for entrance to
the force. Young Raphael did so, was successful, and became a
policeman of the best type. He and his family, said Roosevelt,
"have been close friends of mine ever since." Another comment
which he added is delicious and illuminating: "To show our
community of feeling and our grasp of the facts of life, I may
mention that we were almost the only men in the Police Department
who picked Fitzsimmons as a winner against Corbett." There is
doubtless much in this little incident shocking to the
susceptibilities of many who would consider themselves among the
"best" people. But Roosevelt would care little for that. He was a
real democrat; and to his great soul there was nothing either
incongruous or undesirable in having--and in admitting that he
had--close friends in an East Side Jewish family just over from
Russia. He believed, too, in "the strenuous life," in boxing and
in prize fighting when it was clean. He could meet a subordinate
as man to man on the basis of such a personal matter as their
respective judgment of two prize fighters, without relaxing in
the slightest degree their official relations. He was a man of
realities, who knew how to preserve the real distinctions of life
without insisting on the artificial ones.
One of the best allies that Roosevelt had was Jacob A. Riis, that
extraordinary man with the heart of a child, the courage of a
lion, and the spirit of a crusader, who came from Denmark as an
immigrant, tramped the streets of New York and the country roads
without a place to lay his head, became one of the best police
reporters New York ever knew, and grew to be a flaming force for
righteousness in the city of his adoption. His book, "How the
Other Half Lives", did more to clean up the worst slums of the
city than any other single thing. When the book appeared,
Roosevelt went to Mr. Riis's office, found him out, and left a
card which said simply, "I have read your book. I have come down
to help." When Roosevelt became Police Commissioner, Riis was in
the Tribune Police Bureau in Mulberry Street, opposite Police
Headquarters, already a well valued friend. Roosevelt took him
for guide, and together they tramped about the dark spots of the
city in the night hours when the underworld slips its mask and
bares its arm to strike. Roosevelt had to know for himself. He
considered that he had two duties as Police Commissioner: one to
make the police force an honest and effective public servant; the
other to use his position "to help in making the city a better
place in which to live and work for those to whom the conditions
of life and labor were hardest." These night wanderings of
"Haroun al Roosevelt," as some one successfully ticketed him in
allusion to the great Caliph's similar expeditions, were
powerful aids to the tightening up of discipline and to the
encouragement of good work by patrolmen and roundsmen. The
unfaithful or the easy-going man on the beat, who allowed himself
to be beguiled by the warmth and cheer of a saloon back-room, or
to wander away from his duty for his own purposes, was likely to
be confronted by the black slouch hat and the gleaming spectacles
of a tough-set figure that he knew as the embodiment of
relentless justice. But the faithful knew no less surely that he
was their best friend and champion.
In the old days of "the system," not only appointment to the
force and promotion, but recognition of exceptional achievement
went by favor. The policeman who risked his life in the pursuit
of duty and accomplished some big thing against great odds could
not be sure of the reward to which he was entitled unless he had
political pull. It was even the rule in the Department that the
officer who spoiled his uniform in rescuing man, woman, or child
from the waters of the river must get a new one at his own
expense. "The system" knew neither justice nor fair play. It knew
nothing but the cynical phrase of Richard Croker, Tammany Hall's
famous boss, "my own pocket all the time." But Roosevelt changed
all that. He had not been in Mulberry Street a month before that
despicable rule about the uniform was blotted out. His whole term
of office on the Police Board was marked by acts of recognition
of bravery and faithful service. Many times he had to dig the
facts out for himself or ran upon them by accident. There was no
practice in the Department of recording the good work done by the
men on the force so that whoever would might read.
Roosevelt enjoyed this part of his task heartily. He believed
vigorously in courage, hardihood, and daring. What is more, he
believed with his whole soul in men. It filled him with pure joy
when he discovered a man of the true stalwart breed who held his
own life as nothing when his duty was at stake.
During his two years' service, he and his fellow Commissioners
singled out more than a hundred men for special mention because
of some feat of heroism. Two cases which he describes in his
"Autobiography" are typical of the rest. One was that of an old
fellow, a veteran of the Civil War, who was a roundsman.
Roosevelt noticed one day that he had saved a woman from drowning
and called him before him to investigate the matter. The veteran
officer was not a little nervous and agitated as he produced his
record. He had grown gray in the service and had performed feat
after feat of heroism; but his complete lack of political backing
had kept him from further promotion. In twenty-two years on the
force he had saved some twenty-five persons from drowning, to say
nothing of rescuing several from burning buildings. Twice
Congress had passed special acts to permit the Secretary of the
Treasury to give him a medal for distinguished gallantry in
saving life. He had received other medals from the Life Saving
Society and from the Police Department itself. The one thing that
he could not achieve was adequate promotion, although his record
was spotless. When Roosevelt's attention was attracted to him, he
received his promotion then and there. "It may be worth
mentioning," says Roosevelt, "that he kept on saving life after
he was given his sergeantcy."
The other case was that of a patrolman who seemed to have fallen
into the habit of catching burglars. Roosevelt noticed that he
caught two in successive weeks, the second time under unusual
conditions. The policeman saw the burglar emerging from a house
soon after midnight and gave chase. The fugitive ran toward Park
Avenue. The New York Central Railroad runs under that avenue, and
there is a succession of openings in the top of the tunnel. The
burglar took a desperate chance by dropping through one of the
openings, at the imminent risk of breaking his neck. "Now the
burglar," says Roosevelt, "was running for his liberty, and it
was the part of wisdom for him to imperil life and limb; but the
policeman was merely doing his duty, and nobody could have blamed
him for not taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in this
particular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the
unrighteous. The burglar had the breath knocked out of him, and
the 'cop' didn't. When his victim could walk, the officer trotted
him around to the station house." When Roosevelt had discovered
that the patrolman's record showed him to be sober, trustworthy,
and strictly attentive to duty, he secured his promotion at once.
So the Police Commission, during those two years, under the
driving force of Roosevelt's example and spirit, went about the
regeneration of the force whose former proud title of "The
Finest" had been besmirched by those who should have been its
champions and defenders. Politics, favoritism, and corruption
were knocked out of the department with all the thoroughness that
the absurd bipartisan scheme of administration would permit.
The most spectacular fight of all was against the illegal
operations of the saloons. The excise law forbade the sale of
liquor on Sunday. But the police, under orders from "higher up,"
enforced the law with discretion. The saloons which paid
blackmail, or which enjoyed the protection of some powerful
Tammany chieftain, sold liquor on Sunday with impunity. Only
those whose owners were recalcitrant or without influence were
compelled to obey the law.
Now a goodly proportion of the population of New York, as of any
great city, objects strenuously to having its personal habits
interfered with by the community. This is just as true now in the
days of prohibition as it was then in the days of "Sunday
closing." So when Roosevelt came into office with the simple,
straightforward conviction that laws on the statute books were
intended to be enforced and proceeded to close all the saloons on
Sunday, the result was inevitable. The professional politicians
foamed at the mouth. The yellow press shrieked and lied. The
saloon-keepers and the sharers of their illicit profits wriggled
and squirmed. But the saloons were closed. The law was enforced
without fear or favor. The Sunday sale of liquor disappeared from
the city, until a complaisant judge, ruling upon the provision of
the law which permitted drink to be sold with a meal, decreed
that one pretzel, even when accompanied by seventeen beers, made
a "meal." No amount of honesty and fearlessness in the
enforcement of the law could prevail against such judicial aid
and comfort to the cause of nullification. The main purpose of
Roosevelt's fight for Sunday closing, the stopping of blackmail,
was, however, achieved. A standard of law enforcement was set
which shows what can be done even with an unpopular law, and in
New York City itself, if the will to deal honestly and without
cowardice is there.
So the young man who was "ever a fighter" went on his way,
fighting evil to the death wherever he found it, achieving
results, making friends eagerly and enemies blithely, learning,
broadening, growing. Already he had made a distinct impression
upon his times.
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