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Any man who has been successful, Roosevelt repeatedly said, has leapt at opportunities chance provides. In the fall of 1894, a series of exposés, most notably involving Tammany’s unscrupulous relationships with the city’s police department, had compromised the Democratic Party’s traditional hold on city politics. A defiant mood of reform was in the air. In the wake of the scandals, a reform-minded Republican businessman, William Strong, was elected mayor. Not long after he was sworn in, he offered Roosevelt the most challenging job in his administration: police commissioner, chief of the four-man police board. Roosevelt accepted without hesitation. “I have the most important and the most corrupt department in New York on my hands,” Roosevelt wrote about the difficulties ahead, the note of excitement loud and piercing.
Using many of the same leadership techniques he had devised and utilized in his “Six Years’ War” as Civil Service commissioner, Roosevelt wasted no time heralding the fact that regime change had transpired. He literally hit the ground running, racing up the steps of the Mulberry Street police headquarters in order to dramatize for the reporters in his wake that accelerated activity would henceforth mark the Police Board. “It was all breathless and sudden,” one reporter recalled. Still jogging along, Roosevelt fired off questions: Which higher officials should be consulted, which ones ignored, which ones punished? What were “the customs, rules, methods” of the police board? “What do we do first?”
In truth, Roosevelt needed no suggestions on what to do first. On the police board sat two Democrats and two Republicans. Roosevelt had agreed to accept Strong’s offer on the condition that he be made head of the board. His preordained election was the first order of business. To Roosevelt’s mind, the structure of the four-member board portended “unmitigated mischief.” Power “in most positions,” he believed, should be concentrated “in the hands of one man.” This might signify the fairly bold credo of a dictator except for the major caveat Roosevelt added: “so long as that man could be held fully responsible for the exercise of that power by the people.” While his election as chief helped Roosevelt to consolidate power, this time, in contrast to his experience with the Civil Service Commission, board members proved less pliable. “Thinks he’s the whole board,” complained Democrat Andrew Parker. “He talks, talks, talks, all the time. Scarcely a day passes that there is not something from him in the papers.” Politically at odds and filled with personal animosity, Parker failed to understand that for Roosevelt publicity was not merely the craving to bask in the focused glare of public attention; public sentiment was his single most potent instrument for driving change.
Roosevelt clearly understood that he had much to learn about the machinations of the police department and he had to learn at once. He turned for guidance to veteran police reporters Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens. Roosevelt could not have found two more valuable mentors. Roosevelt had read Riis’s first book, How the Other Half Lives, a devastating depiction of the daily struggles of the poor in the immigrant ghettos of New York. So shaken was Roosevelt by this pathbreaking tour-de-force that he set out to find Riis in his office. Riis was absent, but Roosevelt left a card with a scribbled message, saying, “I’ve come to help.” Thus began a lifelong friendship between the two men that blossomed during Roosevelt’s tenure as police commissioner. “For two years,” Riis recalled, “we were to be together all the day, and quite often most of the night, in the environment in which I had spent twenty years of my life. And these two were the happiest by far of them all. Then was life really worth living.” While Roosevelt’s relationship with the immensely ambitious, self-confident Steffens was both less profound and less durable, he benefited greatly from this talented reporter who had covered the state legislature’s stunning probe of police department corruption for the Evening Post and was now the head of the Post’s police bureau. With solid information and advice provided by Riis and Steffens, the new police commissioner felt equipped to launch his new venture.
The first massive task that presented itself was to analyze the basic problems of the organization and assault them head-on. The notorious investigation by the state legislature had revealed ubiquitous corruption “from top to bottom”; the police force was found to be “utterly demoralized.” It had been revealed that Tammany required new police recruits to pay a fee for their appointments, with the understanding that as they rose in the ranks they would participate in the blackmail fund Tammany accrued by their multifarious extortion schemes. For a monthly fee, gambling houses and brothels were guaranteed protection from raids, grocery stores could display their wares on the sidewalk, and compliant saloons could remain open on Sundays. With each higher rank a policeman or a politician attained, his percentage of the blackmail fund grew.
Roosevelt’s diagnosis of the situation led to the formation of a three-pronged strategy. He had to purge leaders at the top, change the culture in which the individual policemen worked, and deal a fatal blow to the widespread system of graft and bribery that enveloped the police, the politicians, and the managers of thousands of small businesses.
Within three weeks of his swearing in, Roosevelt forced the resignations of the powerful superintendent of police, Tom Byrnes, and his chief inspector, Alec “Clubber” Williams. Questioned under oath during the hearings conducted by the state legislature, neither man could adequately account for how they had accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank accounts. The sudden firings generated headlines in every city paper, signaling that the new Police Board “would spare no man” in its drive to weed out corruption. In the future, merit alone would guide appointments of recruits and determine every level of promotion. Roosevelt’s assertive action provoked anxiety on the part of the Republican bosses. They feared he was moving too far too fast and creating uproar wherever he went. So long as Roosevelt could count on the full-throated support of the public, he would stick to his guns.
Despite the changes he had made in the top leadership, Roosevelt recognized that lasting reform would be determined by the behavior of the patrolman on the beat. Accordingly, he initiated the second prong of his strategy—to patrol the patrolmen. He resolved to learn firsthand the nature of the patrolman’s work and to lay down the values of a new culture for the entire force. Following the advice of Riis, he made a series of unannounced “midnight rambles.” Disguising his identity with an oversized coat and a floppy hat drawn down over his forehead, he roamed the streets of a dozen or more patrol areas between midnight and sunrise to determine whether the policemen assigned to those zones were carrying out their duties. With Riis by his side to help him navigate parts of the city he barely knew existed, Roosevelt found policemen relaxing in bars, eating at all-night restaurants, entertaining women on street corners. In each case, Roosevelt summoned the officer to appear at headquarters the following morning for disciplinary action. In one instance, he found a patrolman eating oysters at a Third Avenue bar. Without revealing his identity, he inquired why the officer was not on the street at his post where he belonged. “What is that to you, and who are you anyway,” the officer asked. “I am Police Commissioner Roosevelt,” came the reply. “Sure you are,” the patrolman mocked. “You’re Grover Cleveland and Mayor Strong, all in a bunch.” “Shut up, Bill,” the bartender said, “it is his Nibs sure! Don’t you see his teeth and glasses?”
Stories of Roosevelt’s unprecedented midnight rambles captivated reporters and the public alike. After his initial foray, seasoned reporters and writers often accompanied him (including Lincoln Steffens, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, and Richard Harding Davis). Within short order, these nocturnal forays produced headlines across the country. “Sly Policemen Caught by Slyer Roosevelt,” one headline read. “Roosevelt on Patrol: He Makes the Night Hideous for Sleepy Policemen,” blared another. Cartoonists had a field day. Cartoons of policemen crouching in fear at the sight of an enormous set of teeth, metal-rimmed spectacles, and a mustache entertained the country and ushered Roosevelt into new nat
ional prominence. The Chicago Times-Herald dubbed him “the most interesting man in America.” But as one reformer noted, “However amusing to the public, Roosevelt’s purposes were entirely serious.” The prospect that the commissioner might suddenly appear in the dark of night made individual patrolmen more accountable for their actions. To reformers, these reconnaissance missions were emblematic of “the beginning of a new epoch.”
Even as Roosevelt disciplined individual policemen who were shirking their duties, he insisted that the majority of the police force were “naturally first-rate men” caught in a bad system that had to be changed to reward merit, not wrongdoing. When he came upon an officer on proper patrol, he offered encouragement and thanks. If he found a designated area where every patrolman was on his scheduled watch, he sought out the officer in charge. “You are to be congratulated, sir,” he told the sergeant with effusive goodwill, “this precinct is well-patrolled.” Maintaining that it was as important to recognize good behavior as to punish bad conduct, he established a system to award certificates and medals to officers who exhibited “courage and daring”—men who risked their lives to catch criminals, struggled with runaway horses, saved children from drowning, and performed countless other heroic deeds in the course of their everyday duties. Recognition ceremonies, promotions based solely on merit, professional training, a new school of pistol practice, and the formation of a popular bicycle squad: Such a combination of programs provided incentives to the “men with the nightsticks.” An innovative bureaucrat, Roosevelt introduced a range of technological improvements to the police department, including a Rogue’s Gallery of photographs, the use of fingerprinting, and an expansion of telephone communications. The morale of the police force began the slow process of healing and restoration.
At the same time, Roosevelt recognized the importance of building a police force that represented the diversity of the city. By the end of his tenure, all the dominant ethnic strains were included—Irish Americans, German Americans, African Americans, Jews, Scandinavians, Italians, Slavs, and many other nationalities. Seeking to weld them into “one body,” he acted swiftly when signs of prejudice or discrimination became visible. “When one man attacked another because of his breed or birthplace, I got rid of him in summary fashion,” Roosevelt claimed.
As police commissioner, Roosevelt proudly noted, “my whole work, brings me into contact with every class of people in New York as no other work possibly could.” His position on the Police Board included membership on the Board of Health, authorizing him to scrutinize sanitary conditions in the slums in a more systematic and comprehensive way than afforded by the single eye-opening visit under the auspices of Samuel Gompers he had made a decade earlier to the cigar tenements. Together with Riis, he conducted inspections of overcrowded, unsanitary tenements with crumbling staircases, peeling walls, insufficient air, and unlit hallways. “One might hear of overcrowding in tenements for years,” Riis later remarked, “and not grasp the subject as he could by a single midnight inspection.” After midnight, the slum is “caught off its guard,” Riis remarked, “the veneering is off and you see the true grain of the thing,” especially on sweltering summer nights. The reports Roosevelt made to the Board of Health forced owners to make improvements, to light dark hallways and fix unsafe stairways. In several cases, the worst tenements were razed.
No action Roosevelt took during these months required more strength and resolution and, in the end, took a greater personal and political toll than the third prong of his headlong assault—his mission to sever “the tap-root” of corruption—the Sunday closing law. Over the previous decade, the law had been warped into a colossal sluiceway of political and police graft. Owners and managers of the more than ten thousand saloons operating in the city understood that so long as they continued making a monthly dole to police and politicians, they were free to remain open on the most profitable day of the week. Those who refused payment were summarily shut down and arrested for violating the law. “The result,” Roosevelt argued, “was that the officers of the law, the politicians, and the saloon-keepers became inextricably tangled in a network of crime.” By enforcing the law “fairly and squarely” against all establishments instead of imposing it “against some and not others,” he hoped to eliminate the central source of the city’s corruption.
Personally, Roosevelt did not agree with the Sunday closing law, which the state legislature had passed as a concession to rural constituents. For the working class, on the job six days a week, the local saloon was a place to relax with friends on their one day off, to drink beer, play cards, shoot pool, and talk politics. But the law was on the books, and as police commissioner, Roosevelt felt he had “no honorable alternative save to enforce it.” He had “never been engaged in a more savage fight,” Roosevelt told Cabot Lodge.
The months of warfare had begun to show results, however. Surveying the battlefield with his comrade-in-arms, Jacob Riis, “driving and walking around for nine hours to see for ourselves exactly how the law was enforced, I had no idea how complete our success was; not four percent of the saloons were open and these were doing business with the greatest secrecy and to a most limited extent.” Though he had fully expected the “furious rage” of the saloonkeepers and their political allies, he was ill-prepared for the venomousness of the messages that flooded his office from members of the working class. “You are the biggest fool that ever lived.” “You are the deadest duck that ever died in a political pond.” “What an ass you have made of yourself.” A box sent to his office containing dynamite detonated before reaching its destination. “A less resolute man” would have backed down, observed Jacob Riis, “but he went right on doing the duty he was sworn to do.”
Refusing to take “the howl” of criticism personally, Roosevelt astonished his critics when he accepted an invitation to attend what turned out to be a massive parade protesting the new enforcement policy of “the Police Czar.” Escorted to the reviewing stand on Lexington Avenue, he stood for two hours, smiling and waving as decorated floats and more than thirty thousand marchers paraded by carrying scornful banners and placards. Sighting one large banner inscribed with the words “Roosevelt’s Razzle Dazzle Reform Racket,” he asked the men carrying it if he could keep it as a souvenir. His good-natured embrace of criticism captured the imagination of the crowd. “Bully for Teddy!” marchers shouted. “Teddy, you’re a man!” The Chicago Evening Journal summed up the day’s event: “Cheered by Those Who Came to Jeer.”
Although Roosevelt’s self-mockery won the day, his war against the saloons was politically untenable. With the next election cycle approaching, Mayor Strong pressured Roosevelt to “let up on the saloon,” threatening to fire him if he balked. “He was terribly angry,” Roosevelt told Lodge, but “I would not change.” The results of the election confirmed the worst fears of Republican leaders. The Democratic Tammany machine roared back into power, regaining all it had lost two years earlier. “Reform was beaten,” Lincoln Steffens lamented, and the blame was squarely affixed to Roosevelt. The systematic reform he had tried to institute by enforcing the Sunday closing law had been perceived as a curtailment of personal liberty. Roosevelt had failed to frame the narrative as a necessary battle against corruption in such a way as to gain the people’s confidence and support.
In Albany, the state legislature debated various ways to legislate Roosevelt out of office. A noose was tightening. “Just at present I am a special object of censure on every side,” Roosevelt admitted to Bamie, acknowledging that he now suffered from “hours of profound depression.” Lodge also worried about his friend and told Bamie, “He seems overstrained & overwrought—that wonderful spring and interest in all sorts of things is much lowered.”
Where had Roosevelt’s leadership gone astray? “I do not deal with public sentiment. I deal with the law,” Roosevelt had repeatedly insisted. But every leader must deal with public sentiment, as Abraham Lincoln had learned from the negative reaction to his intemperate maiden speech
before the Congress, when he had failed to take into account the widespread popularity of the Mexican-American War. It was one thing for Roosevelt to earn the ire of the political bosses and the saloonkeepers, quite another to have become the scapegoat and antagonist of the working class he had worked so hard to understand and befriend. While he had anticipated trouble from the public when he first began to enforce the Sunday law, he had underestimated the intensity of the outcry from working-class immigrants. In contrast to his experience as Civil Service commissioner, where he had no doubt that his meritocratic efforts were entirely positive, he belatedly realized that there were other times (and the complicated saloon brawl was one) where there was a little of right and wrong “on each side, and then it becomes mighty puzzling to know the exact course to follow.”
So virulent had the personal animosity toward Roosevelt grown that his innovations, policies, and programs risked being diluted or even undone if he stayed longer. He needed to find a way out. He rationalized that his work was accomplished—he had prepared the ground for those who would come after him. And there was truth to his rationalization, for a difficult reform had begun and it would impact the police department for years to come.
William McKinley’s 1896 campaign for president provided Roosevelt with the perfect exit. Taking temporary leave from the Police Board, he stumped far and wide for the Republican nominee and swiftly became one of the most sought after speakers on the campaign trail. However unpopular he was as police commissioner in New York, his corruption and crime-fighting exploits had made him a compelling figure across the country. Already, Theodore Roosevelt had become a symbol and leader in the war against corruption that in the next decade would win the widespread support of his countrymen. Everywhere he went, he attracted great crowds, the venues “jammed, people standing in masses in the aisles.” By giving “all of his time, all of his energy, and all his towering ability to the work of the campaign,” he once again earned the plaudits of the Republican bosses.
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