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.