The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  ALTHOUGH ROOSEVELT WAS doubtless pleased to have been given pride of place among his colleagues, he found, within two days of taking office, that the honor was merely titular. On 8 May 1895, Mayor Strong approved an Albany bill which substantially altered the power structure of the New York police.9 Far from elevating the president of the Board above the other Commissioners (as a certain Assemblyman named Roosevelt had suggested in 1884), the Bi-Partisan Police Act depressed him to virtually the same level. Since two Board members were necessarily Republicans, and the other two Democrats, agenda tending to divide the parties would inevitably cause deadlock. Roosevelt knew that these could be resolved only by deal-making or by wrangling. Neither solution appealed to him. The new law, he wrote sarcastically, “modeled the government of the police force somewhat on the lines of the Polish Parliament.”10

  It virtually guaranteed that, contrary to what he had just announced, there was going to be plenty of politics-as-usual in the Police Department, from the Board on down. One of the Act’s provisions, frustrating to him as a former campaigner against partisan patronage, was to transfer authority over police examinations from the municipal civil-service commission to a special panel of police officers—each of whom, presumably, would be easily bought. The Act insisted, further, on equal two-party representation while extending the Police Board’s control of city elections. This in effect gave the Republican party—a perennial minority in New York municipal affairs—disproportionate clout in “supervising” voter behavior. At the same time, crazily, it seemed designed to thwart any majority decision by the Commissioners. “Lest we should get such a majority, it gave each member power to veto the actions of his colleagues in certain very important matters; and, lest we should do too much when we were unanimous, it provided that the Chief [of Police], our nominal subordinate, should have entirely independent action … and should be practically irremovable.”11

  The Chief, moreover, was a formidable figure. Commissioners might come and go, but Thomas F. Byrnes bestrode Mulberry Street with the solidity of a Colossus. At fifty-three, he bade fair to outlast the present Board well into the next century. Byrnes was internationally famous as a detective of almost mystic power, capable of retrieving stolen property at will. “Enough,” he would say soothingly to a distraught Fifth Avenue matron, “your diamonds will be delivered at your house within three days.” Invariably they were.12 Cynical observers, like Lincoln Steffens, noted that such spectacular achievements were the result of a comfortable arrangement with organized crime. The Chief allowed certain lords of the underworld carte blanche, providing their gangs worked regular beats, and cooperated whenever he asked them to return this or that haul for publicity purposes. It was also agreed that the gangs would stay away from the financial district, for Byrnes had another comfortable arrangement with the lords of Wall Street. Capitalists like Jay Gould did not wish to be disturbed by petty bank heists while they went about the larger business of robbing the United States Treasury, and they were prepared to reward Byrnes for his protection with favored stocks and bonds. As a result, the Chief prospered mightily; by 1895 he was worth at least $350,000, according to his own public estimate.13

  Graft on so majestic a scale could not be expected of other police officers, but Byrnes’s example was an inspiration to all, and the corruption elsewhere was proportionate, according to rank. Reporting directly to the Chief were three inspectors, whose corpulent figures and gold-laced uniforms amply symbolized the rewards of office. Then came thirty-five Captains, each of whom controlled a precinct, and the revenues thereof.14 Officers from high-vice areas like the Tenderloin waxed noticeably richer than their colleagues. However even the poorest precinct was worth several thousand a year if properly organized. A regular system of “taxation” prevailed in most parts of town, whereby the owner of any business, legal or illegal, paid dues based on turnover. Greengrocers would hand over a dollar or two a day for permission to stack fruit on the sidewalk. Owners of gambling houses set aside $15 to $300 a month as insurance against raids. Saloons paid $10,000 for a liquor license; the madam of a brothel might contribute $30,000 over an extended period to her precinct captain, along with more intimate favors upon request.15

  Another form of corruption—job-peddling—flourished within the Police Department itself. Since there were at least two qualified applicants for every one of the force’s thirty-eight thousand positions, certain market values prevailed. In 1894 the going rate for a captaincy was $10,000, although some men had been known to pay $12,000 to $15,000 in hard currency.16 At the opposite end of the scale, appointment as a patrolman could be had for $300—even that was much more than most recruits were able to pay. Examining officers explained kindly that the investment would soon be recouped on the beat.17

  All these sums were a matter of common notoriety when Roosevelt took office. Only four months before, an investigating committee of the New York State Senate, headed by Clarence L. Lexow (R), had published them in a sensational report recommending “an indictment against the Police Department of New York City as a whole.” The 10,576-page document, which represented the most searching municipal probe since the days of the Tweed Ring, included a sample police “budget,” as follows:

  Regular Appropriation $5,139,147.64

  Brothel Contributions 8,120,000.00

  Saloon Contributions 1,820,000.00

  Gambling-house Contributions 165,000.00

  Merchants, peddlers etc. 50,000.00

  New Members of Force 60,000.00

  Grand Total: $15,354,147.64

  The fact that such figures were now quoted in guidebooks to the city, along with the height of the Statue of Liberty and the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, was indicative of the weary tolerance with which police bribery was regarded.18

  The memoirs of Commissioners Andrews and Roosevelt differ as to the true extent of corruption in their department in May 1895. Andrews, who had a military fondness for men in uniform, believed that “the great majority of the rank and file were honest and efficient … Graft was largely confined to certain senior officers, and their ‘wardmen’, or graft collectors.”19 Roosevelt expressed himself rather more negatively. “From top to bottom,” he wrote, “the New York police force was utterly demoralized by the gangrene … venality and blackmail went hand-in-hand with the basest forms of low ward politics … the policeman, the ward politician, the liquor seller, and the criminal alternately preyed on one another and helped one another to prey on the general public.”20

  Of course the truth lay somewhere between these two extremes. However both Commissioners, in referring to wardmen and ward politics, emphasized that the Police Department was not in business merely for itself. Its traditional function, indeed, was to finance the city’s political machines. Often the person collecting “contributions” around each precinct at the end of the week was not a policeman at all, but an employee of Tammany Hall.21 The vast sums thus accrued had kept the Democratic organization in power from 1886 (the year Abram Hewitt defeated Theodore Roosevelt for Mayor) until 1894, when mounting disgust over the Lexow hearings swept the reform ticket to victory.

  As a result of this near-decade of corrupt domination of New York City politics, Tammany Hall had become so solidly entrenched that Mayor Strong’s election seemed but a temporary interruption of the status quo. “Our people could not stand the rotten police corruption,” Boss Richard Croker admitted. “They’ll be back at the next election; they can’t stand reform either.”22

  Croker’s confidence was based on the fact that the Police Board also constituted the Board of Elections. This useful quirk in the law gave the four Commissioners power to appoint all election officers, prepare and count all ballots, and preserve order—or willful disorder—at the polls.23 Croker’s last tame Commissioner on Mulberry Street had boasted that “given control of the police, he cared not how the public voted.”24 Croker could have rigged the last election, as he had others in the past; but, being a political realist, he deemed it wiser n
ot to play with the passions aroused by the Lexow investigation. Tammany Hall could afford to put up its shutters for a season or two. Its precinct organization was as perfect as ever, and its financial prospects were excellent. Corruption in the Police Department would continue, Roosevelt or no Roosevelt.25

  “NOW, THEN, what’ll we do?” Roosevelt’s impetuous question sounded odd in the ears of the two reporters as they sat in his office on the first day of his Commissionership. “It was just as if we three were the Police Board,” marveled Lincoln Steffens, “TR, Riis, and I.” Willing as both men were to suggest what and whom Roosevelt might attack—for he was clearly in a fighting mood—they cautioned him to “go a bit slow” at first, and to discuss a program of reform with his colleagues.26 But Roosevelt knew he could achieve little in this job by proceeding deliberately; it was about as powerful, in constitutional terms, as his last. Once again he must exercise his genius for press relations. Instinct told him that these scribes would be of more use to him than the three Commissioners now waiting in the hallway.27

  Jacob Riis, at forty-six, was the most influential reporter in the city. A big, rumpled, noisy, sweet-natured Dane, he had been obsessed with social reform ever since his youth as a penniless immigrant on the Lower East Side. (Deep within him he carried the memory of a policeman beating out the brains of his pet dog against the steps of Church Street Station.)28 In 1890 Riis’s documentary book How the Other Half Lives, illustrated with his own photographs, had shocked all thinking Americans into awareness of the horrors of the ghetto. Not long after its publication, he had found a card from Theodore Roosevelt on his desk, with the scrawled message, “I have read your book, and I have come to help.”29 A meeting had been arranged, and the Dane, by his own admission, fell in love at first sight.30 Now, five years later, God had appointed Roosevelt president of the Police Board; the promised help was at hand.

  There is no record of Roosevelt’s first impression of Lincoln Steffens, but subsequent evidence indicates that he understood the young man shrewdly. Steffens was twenty-nine years old; thin, vain, arrogant, wolfishly ambitious, with the beady eye of a born investigative reporter. He had no false sentiment (unlike Riis, who refused to cover raids on homosexual brothels, on the grounds that “there are no such creatures in this world”).31 Roosevelt knew just how to handle Steffens. A mild scoop every now and again; indulgent nods when he ventured some criticism; a few flattering requests for advice—like “Now, then, what’ll we do?”—and the reporter would be his man. In return, Roosevelt could be sure of a constant supply of raw political information, and much useful gossip.32

  Commissioner Parker was not pleased at having to wait outside Roosevelt’s office, and was heard to grumble, “Thinks he’s the whole Board.” For most of that first day, however, the four new colleagues acted harmoniously. They laughed and chatted together,33 and each seemed pleased with his agreed-on responsibilities. Parker was given the glamorous and important job of reorganizing the Detective Bureau. Roosevelt showed further confidence in his political integrity by naming him chairman of the Committee of Elections. Grant was made overseer of repairs and supplies, and chairman of the Disciplinary Committee. The military Andrews was asked to draw up a new set of rules designed to tighten efficiency and ensure accountability in the ranks, in addition to his duties as treasurer. Roosevelt, who enjoyed ex officio a seat on all committees, announced that he would concern himself with problems of overall administration, and would act as press spokesman for the entire Board.34

  JUST HOW SUCCESSFUL he was in the latter capacity may be judged from the following collage of newspaper headlines and cartoon captions, representing his first ten days in office:

  ROOSEVELT’S NEW GIRL SECRETARY

  The Police Board President Causes Sensation on

  Mulberry Street

  REIGN OF TERROR AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS

  Merit Wins Promotion Now—

  Political Pulls Frowned Upon

  RATTLED—THE DRY OLD POLICE BONES

  Kick the Politicians, Lecture the Legislature

  Snub the Roundsmen, Warn the Drunken Bluecoats

  Abolish the Police Parades, & Stir up

  Departmental Surgeons

  ROOSEVELT AS JUDGE

  The Reform Commissioner Tries Nearly

  100 Policemen in One Day

  “Pulls” Found Worthless Before the Inquisitor

  With Big Teeth and Rasping Voice35

  A subhead in the World summed up the new Commissioner’s policy in these words: Publicity, publicity, publicity.36 He seemed determined to expose to general scrutiny every aspect of his department’s work, from transcripts of Board meetings to dossiers on the moral fitness of officers for promotion. His habit of inviting reporters to spend the day in his big, bare office made it difficult for the representatives of political organizations to have private speech with him. Whenever the politicians began to whisper, he would deliberately answer “in a voice loud enough to be heard across the room.”37

  The white glare of all this publicity inevitably focused much attention upon Roosevelt the man. A lead article in the World of 17 May shows with what clarity he stamped his image on the pages of the press. Although the article purported to describe a routine trial of police officers for infractions of discipline, it dwelt with fascinated relish upon the judge’s physical peculiarities, and survives as a documentary portrait of Theodore Roosevelt at thirty-six:

  When he asks a question, Mr. Roosevelt shoots it at the poor trembling policeman as he would shoot a bullet at a coyote.… he shows a set of teeth calculated to unnerve the bravest of the Finest. His teeth are very white and almost as big as a colt’s teeth. They are broad teeth, they form a perfectly straight line. The lower teeth look like a row of dominoes. They do not lap over or under each other, as most teeth do, but come together evenly … They seem to say: “Tell the truth to your Commissioner, or he’ll bite your head off.”

  Generally speaking, this interesting Commissioner’s face is red. He has lived a great deal out of doors, and that accounts for it. His hair is thick and short … Under his right ear he has a long scar. It is the opinion of all the policemen who have talked with him that he got that scar fighting an Indian out West. It is also their opinion that the Indian is dead.

  But Mr. Roosevelt’s voice is the policeman’s hardest trial. It is an exasperating voice, a sharp voice, a rasping voice. It is a voice that comes from the tips of the teeth and seems to say in its tones, “What do you amount to, anyway?”

  One thing our noble force may make up its mind to at once—it must do as Roosevelt says, for it is not likely that it will succeed in beating him.38

  Jacob Riis, reporting another trial for the Evening Sun, noted how impossible it was for Roosevelt to yield conduct of the court to any of his colleagues. Within a quarter of an hour (although Andrews had the chair) he was putting all the questions and interrupting most of the answers. “Once or twice he turned to Commissioner Andrews and apologized … but by the time the third case ended there was no longer any apparent need to do that.”39

  Andrews did not mind being upstaged, and Grant liked nothing so much as to sit and stare into space, but Parker, Roosevelt quickly sensed, needed careful handling. Fortunately the Democrat seemed to prefer working behind the scenes. Immaculate of trouser-leg, dark and glossy of beard, he would loll in his chair with fingers intertwined, smiling easily and often. He projected an air of fashionable languor, coming to work late, leaving early, not bothering to attend many board meetings; yet there was a certain “sinister efficiency”40 about the way he got things done that Roosevelt greatly admired. “Parker is my mainstay,” he wrote Lodge. “He is able and forceful, but a little inclined to be tricky. Andrews is good but timid, and ‘sticks in the bark.’ Grant is a good fellow, but dull and easily imposed on; he is our element of weakness.”41

  Roosevelt found his new duties “absorbingly interesting,”42 and threw himself into them with animal vigor. His daily arrival at Mulb
erry Street became a ritual entertainment for the stoop-sitters of No. 303. About 8:30 he would come around the corner of Bleecker Street, walking with a springy tread, goggling his spectacles enthusiastically at everything around, about, and behind him. There was a rapid increase in pace as he drew near Police Headquarters, followed by a flying ascent of the front steps. Ahead of him in the lobby, a uniformed porter would step into the waiting elevator and reach for its controls; but by that time Roosevelt, feet blurring, was already halfway up the stairs. Arriving on the second floor with no perceptible rise or fall of his chest, he would scurry across the hallway into his office overlooking the street. Here, one morning, a reporter was on hand to note that “He swings the chair, sits down, and takes off his glasses and his hat, all so quickly that he appears to be doing [everything] at once.”43 Replacing the glasses with pince-nez, Roosevelt would “fling his attention” at the first document in front of him. Read, digested, and acted upon, the item would be given to his “girl secretary”44 for filing, or, often as not, dispensed with in Rooseveltian fashion, i.e., crushed into a ball and hurled to the floor. By the end of the day the area around his desk was ankle-deep in paper jetsam.45 “I wonder he does not wear himself out,” sighed Commissioner Grant.46

  On 13 May, Roosevelt admitted to Bamie (who was now on an extended stay in London, and had rented him her house at 689 Madison Avenue) that “I have never worked harder than in these last six days.” In subsequent letters he altered the clause to read, “the last two weeks,” and “the last four weeks.”47 Hard as it was to familiarize himself with every detail of police bureaucracy, there was the intense, additional frustration of finding himself without real administrative authority. “I have to deal with three colleagues, solve terribly difficult problems, and do my work under hampering laws,” he wrote, in one of his perennial cries for power. “… I have the most important and corrupt department in New York on my hands. I shall speedily assail some of the ablest, shrewdest men in this city, who will be fighting for their lives, and I know how hard the task ahead of me is. Yet, in spite of all the nervous strain and worry, I am glad I undertook it; for it is a man’s work.”48 Being congenitally unable to function unless he had some symbols of evil to attack, Roosevelt looked about him for an opponent. As usual he selected the biggest and nearest. “I think I shall move against Byrnes at once,” he told Lodge on 18 May. “I thoroughly distrust him, and cannot do any thorough work while he remains.49