Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 10

Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 10

“You may call on me at half-past nine and tell me all about it,” was

the response. “I haven’t time now to listen.”

 

The culprits, when they appeared the next morning, had every

conceivable excuse for their shortcomings. Many of them pleaded that

this was their first offense.

 

“Take care that you do not do it a second time,” was Roosevelt’s

response. “I am going to see with my own eyes how you men employ your

time.”

 

On the other hand, where policemen had been found to have performed

their duties well, they were also ordered to call at headquarters the

next day, but instead of being reprimanded like the others, they were

warmly praised. For the first time each man had a show for promotion

on his merits. Neither politics nor religion counted. The man who did

a brave deed was promoted. The man who was found corrupt was “broken.”

That was all there was to it. It required no pull or money to become

a member of the police force when Roosevelt had charge of it. This is

illustrated by his selection of one of his policemen from the Bowery

branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. He tells the story

that he had gone to the branch of the association one night and the

secretary informed him that they had a young man who had just rescued a

woman from a burning building, showing great coolness and courage.

 

The Commissioner was interested--brave men always attracted him. He

asked to see the young man, who was a Russian and who had some years

ago come to America during one of the waves of persecution in the

realm of the Czar. He had been studying in the association classes for

some time and wanted employment. Physically he was of the right type,

and he passed his examination for the force.

 

He made one of the best policemen in the city, and in consequence of

his pay he was able to provide for his mother and his old grandmother

and to start his small brothers and sisters in life. Said Colonel

Roosevelt, “He was already a good son and brother, so that it was not

surprising that he made a good policeman.”

 

Roosevelt’s strenuous and novel methods soon began to count. Instead

of being tools of blackmailers, the men became self-respecting and

“straight.” It became a badge of honor to be known as a “Roosevelt cop.”

 

Mr. Enright, the present Chief of the New York Police Department and an

old member of the force, testifies to the remarkable executive ability

shown by Roosevelt. “He was the first Commissioner to inaugurate a

strict civil service examination,” said Mr. Enright, “and he sent

out a letter requesting 1,000 young men through the state to enter

the examination and become members of the force. He tested them very

severely, asking questions on history and geography. One of his

questions was to name five states west of the Mississippi River and

give the capitals. Another was to name five consecutive Presidents.

 

“He made drastic rules to enforce the excise law in those days, and on

many Sundays used the whole Police Department in his work by placing a

uniformed patrolman in front of the door of every saloon.”

 

Another warm admirer of Colonel Roosevelt is Captain Bourke, who

received from Roosevelt his first promotion after he had arrested Mike

Callahan, owner of a saloon at Mott Street and Chatham Square, who had

been violating the excise law. Callahan was credited with being immune

to arrest, due to his influence with politicians, and Bourke made the

arrest after he had been only six weeks on the force. It was rumored

that Bourke would be dismissed for his act, but when Callahan was

arraigned and convicted Bourke was promoted.

 

Certain elements of the city rebelled against Roosevelt’s rigid

enforcement of the excise laws and organized a parade in protest.

A reviewing stand was built and, unknown to the promoters, Colonel

Roosevelt slipped into the stand. At the head of a division was a stout

German--a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War. Roosevelt’s endeavor to

deprive him of his Sunday beer had aroused his wrath and as he passed

the platform he shouted scornfully in German:

 

“Now, where is that Roosevelt?”

 

Mr. Roosevelt, leaning over the side of the stand, queried, also in

German:

 

“Here I am. What will you, comrade?”

 

The astonished German when it dawned upon him that Roosevelt had

heard him, raised his hat and shouted: “Hurrah for Roosevelt!”

Roosevelt’s good humor caught the crowd. The cheer was repeated and the

demonstration turned to one for the commissioner instead of against him.

 

On one occasion when Roosevelt was on a night tour of investigation,

he walked around a certain beat three times without being able to find

his man. Just as he was about to leave, a quarrel occurred in a cafe

and the owner came out on the sidewalk and knocked with a stick as a

signal that he needed police protection. Three times he rapped, but the

policeman did not come. Roosevelt heard him say:

 

“Where in thunder is the scoundrel sleeping? He should have told me

that he had given up sleeping in the barber shop so that I could have

found him.”

 

The next morning the policeman received a summons to headquarters to

explain why he had changed his sleeping place.

 

It is also told of Roosevelt that an anti-Hebrew lecturer, intending to

denounce Jews, asked for police protection at a lecture. The protection

was promised and sent--thirty Hebrew policemen, whose presence so awed

the speaker that his lecture became quite tame.

 

The attachment of members of the Jewish race for Roosevelt was

illustrated at his funeral. The one man who was permitted to sit alone

in the trophy room at Sagamore Hill, with the body of the Colonel, was

Lieutenant Otto Raphael of the New York Police Force, a Hebrew of the

East side. Mr. Roosevelt, in his biography, describes Raphael as “a

powerful fellow with a good-humored face. He and I were both ‘straight

New Yorkers,’ to use the vernacular. 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 over Corbett.”

 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD

 

COMBINATION PHOTOGRAPH SHOWING ROOSEVELT IN MANY CHARACTERISTIC POSES]

 

Captain William B. Sullivan, now in command of the Gates Avenue Police

Station, Brooklyn, who served as bodyguard to Roosevelt while he was

Police Commissioner, attests that Roosevelt was a born policeman.

“There wasn’t a man in the department,” said Sullivan, “that he didn’t

know by name.”

 

While prosecuting his fight for the enforcement of the Sunday laws,

Roosevelt made the police enforce a regulation which declared that

ice must not be sold after 10 o’clock in the morning on Sundays.

This proved to be a real hardship to the masses of the East side. A

strong appeal was made to the commissioner to be less severe in the

prosecution of this law, but he felt that he was in the right and kept

to his course.

 

Then a reporter wrote a story of the death of a little girl in a

tenement on the East Side. The narrative said that the mother had gone

to buy ice for her after 10 o’clock on Sunday morning and that the

iceman was arrested for selling it, and in the mother’s absence the

child was said to have died.

 

This tale proved to be nothing more or less than a fable, written

to show what could happen under the continued enforcement of this

law. Roosevelt furiously denounced both the reporter and the editor

of the newspaper which published this story, yet he soon withdrew

his opposition to the selling of ice on Sunday. He said that he had

received more than two hundred letters because of the story and that

some of the women who wrote him declared that they would like to tear

him to pieces.

 

In spite of the many bitter battles Roosevelt faced as Police

Commissioner, he never lost his kindness of heart. He found one

gray-haired veteran who had saved twenty-eight lives at the risk of his

own. All of the recognition he had earned from the Police Board for

this heroic deed was the privilege of buying a new uniform at his own

expense, after he ruined his old one in the rescue of the lives.

 

The Police Board resolved, at Roosevelt’s request, that the clothes

ruined in rescuing a life on duty should be paid for by the department.

 

Children found him always a warm, helpful friend. When things happened

in their neighborhood that did violence to their youthful sense of

justice, they came to him with their complaints and, if it were at all

possible, he adjusted them.

 

His enemies tried many times to “get something on him.” One night they

had him shadowed, thinking to catch him off his guard. News came to him

of their attempt. He bridled with indignation. “They found me going

home to my babies. Let them make the most of that,” he cried.

 

While Police Commissioner, Roosevelt acted also as a member of the

Department of Health. Here, working hand in hand with Jacob Riis, he

did much to make conditions better for the poor. In those days it was

the children that were the greatest sufferers from the lack of health

laws.

 

While on his night visits Roosevelt went into dark courts and entered

foul tenements to discover for himself the misery that lay within their

walls. At his recommendation, the worst of these shacks were bought by

the city and torn down. Fire-traps and disease-holes were abolished.

Public playgrounds and parks in the crowded districts were laid out.

Even in such good work Roosevelt met with opposition. He was sued by

two landlords who had been forced to tear down their old buildings, but

the court upheld his action.

 

Throughout his term of office he followed the rule he had inaugurated

while Civil Service Commissioner of giving the widest publicity to

everything that went on in his department. He gave full access to

newspaper men so that the public could know exactly what was going

on. Any one could visit him in his own office and he tried to help

everybody who desired help.

 

Roosevelt’s attitude toward the commercialized social evil in the

red-light districts was one of determined and unwavering opposition.

 

In his autobiography he states that he considered the social evil the

saddest part of his police work. He made it a rule to treat the men

caught in raids on houses of ill fame precisely as the women were

treated. It was his belief that by treating men and women on an exact

equality for the same act much could be done to minimize the evil. His

judgment was that the same moral level for both sexes must be achieved

by raising the standard for the man and not by lowering it for the woman.