Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

Their stalemate was ironic because Parker and Roosevelt agreed on almost all aspects of police reform—absolute honesty, harsh punishment, strict vice control, saloons closed on Sundays, no Tammany corruption. For months they had shared pulpit and lectern spreading the gospel of reform. But now, it was as though president of the board Roosevelt could not forgive Parker for defying him on those key top-level promotions.

  The city’s corporation counsel, Francis M. Scott, backed Parker’s interpretation of the Police Board rules, which called for four ayes for a promotion. TR was one aye short of getting his way, and neither Conlin nor Parker was budging.

  The corporation counsel also backed Parker’s interpretation that the chief, without needing the board, could “detail” captains to be acting inspectors, just as he could install a sergeant as acting captain if a captain fell sick or went on vacation. Conlin settled the inspector squabble by “detailing” three captains to be acting inspectors and then assigning all six men. (Conlin happened to choose three captains favored by the board.) His one touch that might have borne the fingerprints of Parker was that he assigned John McCullagh to “goatville”—the sixth district, which included northern Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx and Westchester.

  On April 1, the board agreed to throw out the promotion eligibility lists and start over. Roosevelt saved face by saying he thought leaving men dangling on a promotion list for too long might invite bribery or corruption, a not-so-subtle dig at Parker.

  Commissioner Parker, who rarely gave a simple answer to anything, said that fair play demanded a larger pool of candidates—at least five captains—for the three inspector slots, whose appointees would be filling the pipeline to the top job of chief.

  The cynical Herald viewed the deadlock as the same old struggle for patronage, Parker for the Democrats versus TR, who, “while scorning the idea of being influenced by politics, is desirous of promoting only Republicans.”

  Around this time, Roosevelt tried a bold new tactic to defeat Parker: change the rules of the game. With no subterfuge at all, he (with the backing of Andrews and Grant) appealed to the Republican-dominated legislature in Albany to pass a police bill that would allow promotions by a board vote of three to one, and would entitle the board—not the chief—to control all assignments and transfers, including roundsmen.

  The World predicted the bill, if passed, would “spike Conlin’s guns” and “slap” Parker. Pundits of all political stripes expected Republicans to pass it, since right now Democrat Parker and his “cat’s paw” Conlin were holding up the promotions of two Republican inspectors.

  On the overcast morning of Thursday, April 9, Parker and Roosevelt, both elegantly attired, traveled to cavernous Grand Central depot and boarded different cars of the same New York Central train to Albany, traveling as fast as fifty miles an hour up along the Hudson. The New York Press ran the headline LOOK FOR LIVELY FUN about the prospect of the fellow commissioners butting heads in the same committee room.

  They descended five hours later at the Albany train station by the river and headed separately along Broadway and then up three stunningly steep blocks of State Street to the Capitol Building. The population of Albany, the state’s fourth-largest city, stood at 90,000, less than one-twentieth the size of New York City. The elected representatives from picayune upstate counties like Oswego and Herkimer—despite drastically lower residency figures—could easily outvote New York City, which accounted for only 12 of 50 senate seats and 35 of 150 assembly districts.

  Reporters, politicians, and sensation seekers packed the assembly committee room for the discussion of Bill No. 2,149. A family friend thought Roosevelt had a queasy, nervous look about him as he waited for Republican chairman George C. Austin to call him up. Austin flipped the usual order and allowed an advocate of the bill to go first.

  Speaking loudly and forcefully, sawing the air and slamming the table several times, Roosevelt compared the bipartisan board approach to the parliament of Poland 200 years earlier that required a unanimous vote. “It was a comparatively simple matter to end such deadlocks, however, for it was usually done by killing the man who objected,” said Roosevelt, mustering a thin smile. “But that method belonged to an earlier age,” he conceded, turning to his fellow commissioner in the front row. “I would not like to kill Mr. Parker.”

  Roosevelt expanded on the accomplishments of the reform board, achieved before one lone board member began dissenting and before a reinterpretation of the rules granted the chief more power over the men. “I want the chief to be subject to the control of the board,” said TR, shaking his fist. “I ask you gentlemen to put him in his proper place.” With a master’s tone, Roosevelt was making a scorched-earth request; what could Conlin possibly think of a board member who would refer to him that way? “The chief would have never done his duty … if he had not been compelled to do so by the Commission.”

  Icy and sarcastic, Parker argued that passing this bill would invite a return to corruption by overempowering the board and leaving the police chief powerless and forced to watch unqualified men rise. How could the chief be trusted to enforce the laws if he couldn’t be trusted to pick the men to do it for him? This Police Board might be honest, but what about the next Police Board? Parker read aloud passages from the Lexow hearings, documenting how earlier police commissioners, who didn’t need a unanimous, bipartisan vote, horse-traded among themselves to sell transfers and captaincies.

  Roosevelt, unable to sit still, bobbed as Parker spoke, then darted more than once to the sleeve of Chairman Austin to demand rebuttal. Time was granted. Roosevelt repeated his earlier arguments, then, shifting to personal attack, accused Parker of missing meetings, of changing his position.

  Roosevelt at one point blurted: “Emerson said that consistency is the hobgoblin of inferior minds.” Parker shook his head.

  ROOSEVELT: Oh, I can’t accuse you of consistency.

  PARKER: (acidly) Then you think I have a great mind?

  ROOSEVELT: By Jove I think you’ve got a first class mind. Any man who can weave facts in and out in the way you can has a quick brain.

  No debate judge stood by to score the combatants, but in any case Chairman Austin’s committee, dominated by upstate Republicans, did as pundits predicted, and later in closed session voted favorably to send the Roosevelt bill to the assembly.

  In the late afternoon, Roosevelt and Parker reprised their verbal joust before the Senate Committee on Cities. With Republicans holding an 8–4 majority, a positive vote for TR seemed a foregone conclusion.

  Democratic senator Thomas F. Grady of Manhattan tried to come to Parker’s aid by twitting Roosevelt about Election Day.

  GRADY: Your board transferred policemen so that they could not vote. You, however, voted before you went to your duties.

  ROOSEVELT: (hotly) But Judge Lawrence, a Tammany Hall Judge—

  GRADY: (equally hotly) Don’t call Judge Lawrence a Tammany Hall Judge; he is a jurist; you should not bring him into politics.

  ROOSEVELT: Do you consider it a term of opprobrium?

  GRADY: No, but you used it as a term of opprobrium.

  ROOSEVELT: Not so, I merely used the word as descriptive. I wanted to point out that the Judge stated that our system of using policemen on Election Day was the best ever devised.

  Edward “Smooth Ed” Lauterbach, the Republican New York City boss, walked in and out of the committee room several times. During Parker’s final remarks, Lauterbach, Republican senator Ellsworth, and Roosevelt ducked out into the hallway to converse. (Reporters tried but failed to eavesdrop.)

  Around 6 p.m., when the senate chairman recessed the hearing, Commissioner Parker, along with others, strolled out into the corridor.

  Roosevelt, his face purple with rage, rushed toward the taller, bearded lawyer. Trying to control himself and keep his voice low, Roosevelt, clutching a handful of typewritten pages, held them out to Parker for inspection and enunciated to his fellow commissioner: “Mr. Parker, Mr. Lauterbach submits this s
tatement to me as yours.”

  Parker bowed his head slightly, as though mockingly acknowledging authorship. TR hastily read a few lines aloud: “Never in the history of the force have Republicans been so largely selected. The list below will show this, and these selections, as the lists will likewise show, have been almost invariably suggested by Parker, and he has been the one who has [prevented] the Democrats … In brief, if party selections are made the test, Parker has been a Republican and Roosevelt a Democrat.”

  For fans of comic opera and political intrigue, this was a masterstroke by Parker. Accuse Roosevelt—because of his proud municipal reform nonpartisanship—of not backing Republicans! Accuse Roosevelt, that high-ranking member of the stalwartly Republican Union League, of championing Democrats!

  “Those statements are false,” said TR, seething.

  “They are all absolutely true,” coldly replied Parker. Neither man wanted a scene in front of the newspapermen.

  Roosevelt turned abruptly away and told Lauterbach he would send him a detailed reply on the following day. Too agitated by “so heated a wrangle,” TR canceled a long-planned social call at the home of family friend Fanny Parsons.

  The senate committee returned and went into closed session. The chairman, Republican senator Nevada N. Stranahan (Oswego), backed by Republican senator T. E. Ellsworth (Niagara), recommended that the committee report the Roosevelt police reform bill favorably, but five Republican senators—all part of Platt’s Republican machine—voted against it, as did one Democrat. The final tally was 6–2 against, with one abstention and three absentees. Chairman Stranahan told reporters he hoped to bring the stalled measure up again.

  On the train ride south, Roosevelt carefully read the eight-page typewritten letter. For almost a year, he had been walking a tightrope, trying to be a loyal party Republican on national issues and a staunch nonpartisan reformer on local issues. His attitude had deeply irritated Boss Platt and Lieutenant Lauterbach. TR had not handed a single patronage position to Republicans, not even a doorman or an elevator boy.

  Parker’s ambush pinned Roosevelt into a corner. If TR defended himself by stating he had backed more Republicans than Democrats, then his tens of thousands of well-applauded syllables about nonpartisanship, about the end of politics and pull, would deflate as empty platitudes.

  The letter, with Parker’s usual precision, analyzed the promotion of twenty-one acting captains, and found thirteen Republicans and eight Democrats. Going case by case, he cited the likes of “Walsh, Dem. strongly espoused by Roosevelt for promotion to captain, and opposed by Parker till longer probation is had.”

  Just after Roosevelt descended from the train, he learned that his thirty-seven-year-old first cousin, Dr. James West Roosevelt, born the same year as TR, had died. “West” was the family physician, had an Oyster Bay home nearby, and his children played with the Roosevelt children. Roosevelt found it difficult to concentrate.

  On the following morning at 10 a.m., at the Friday Police Board meeting, reporters eagerly awaited the fireworks. Parker, uncharacteristically, showed up first. With stilted politeness, he and TR attended to mundane business. Commissioner Andrews tried to lighten the mood by recounting the mishaps of a rookie cop who got lost on his beat in the wilds of the Bronx, showing up an hour late for morning roll call. “The next time I get that post at night,” Andrews quoted the patrolman as telling him, “I shall insist on being furnished with an ax to hew a path through the forest, with a locomotive headlight to illumine the way, and a dozen red sky rockets to send up for assistance in case I fall into some gully or get tangled up in the jungles north of 180th Street.”

  At the end of the open board meeting, TR commandeered Andrews and Grant into his office. Parker was not invited. The trio spent the next several hours drafting a long, detailed rebuttal letter to Lauterbach.

  TR dictated it, Miss Kelly typed it, and all three signed it. “That statement of Mr. Parker that he is responsible for the bulk of the Republican appointments, and I responsible solely for Democrats is unqualifiedly false.”

  Roosevelt attacked each of twenty promotions in another double-columned presentation. For instance, TR devoted 203 words to rebutting Parker’s claim of credit for advancing Walter L. Thompson, a Republican, to captain from his longtime perch as sergeant. TR explained to Lauterbach that Chief Conlin had first suggested Thompson to Commissioner Grant, who had endorsed him as “best” on a list of possible captains that he had forwarded to Parker, who had examined Thompson and concurred. “Meanwhile,” Commissioner Andrews “independently” discovered Sergeant Thompson—a tough, spry five-foot-four-inch Civil War veteran called “Uncle Walt” by his men—and had suggested him to Roosevelt. Both Grant and Andrews encouraged TR to examine Thompson, whom he judged “a first class man.” Roosevelt branded Parker’s claim for sole credit as “undeniably false.” The long letter is a testament to minutiae and bureaucratic anger. Sprinkled throughout are harsh words: “an absolute untruth,” “an absolute falsehood,” “untrue,” “entirely untrue.”

  Roosevelt informed Lauterbach that the board made promotions based on merit, without regard to politics, that they all elevated thirteen Republicans, and Parker lied when claiming credit. But, curiously, he decided to reveal his votes for the near future, explaining “that the promotions the majority of the board were now anxious to make were, in the majority of cases, Republicans, as far as the board knew.” He added: “I mentioned to [Republican politician Lemuel Quigg and an ally of Roosevelt] that I personally favor for inspectors McCullagh, Brooks, Vreedenburgh, Thompson and Sheehan.” (Four of five were Republicans.) TR was walking a political tightrope.

  That weekend, the Roosevelt clan gathered to cope with the sudden death of West Roosevelt. TR spent much of Saturday and Sunday trying to console his emotionally fragile sister, Corinne, who took the news hard, as did his wife, Edith, who still wore black from losing her mother eleven months earlier. Adding to the gloom, the family suspected that West’s demise had been accelerated by alcoholism.

  Roosevelt attended the funeral service on Monday morning at the Little Chapel on 20th Street and failed to come to 300 Mulberry that morning.

  Someone sent him a letter bomb; this one had gunpowder.

  A postal clerk tore open a corner of the package, which had no stamps, and saw a dozen matchheads. The superintendent of the post office, George Meeks, personally walked it to police headquarters but Roosevelt wasn’t there.

  A detective dunked it in a pail of water, then unwrapped it to discover red wallpaper rolled into a tube, with fine Chinese black gunpowder inside; at one end ten glued match heads lay opposite sandpaper attached to the wrapping paper. If opened quickly, it might produce a spark, which would set off the gunpowder. Chief of Detectives O’Brien said the explosion would not have killed anyone but might have caused severe burns or blindness.

  When Roosevelt arrived after the funeral, he was told of the bomb. “If I had nothing worse than bombs to bother me,” TR told a reporter, “my life would be a bed of roses.” The Journal, without citing sources, added that the bomb was “very popular” at headquarters.

  Roosevelt wrote and rushed at least two more letters to Lemuel Quigg, seeking advice on how to resurrect the police reform bill. Roosevelt wondered if the machine was purposely delaying it to force some concessions out of him—perhaps on Sunday saloons or specific promotions—but he vowed to Quigg he would not compromise.

  Within days, the mischief-making, elfin lawyer Lauterbach leaked Roosevelt’s embittered Parker-thrashing letter to the press, full of charge and countercharge. The World promptly announced POLICE REFORM LOST, a sentiment echoed in other papers. Here was one reform commissioner (Roosevelt) loudly accusing another (Parker) of telling lie after lie after lie. “Roosevelt generally knew how to handle men who opposed him,” wrote Commissioner Andrews years later, “but Parker’s thick epidermis and his apparent indifference to accusations, which another would regard as a deadly insult, left Roosevelt sput
tering.”

  Parker chatted briefly that day with reporters. “I regret that Commissioner Roosevelt should have seen fit to publish either his statement or mine, but, as we sportsmen say, ‘the wounded bird flutters,’ [and] some shaft must have struck deep.”

  TR complained to Lodge:

  Lauterbach queered us before the Senate Committee … Andrews, Grant and I sent a letter to Lauterbach, taking [Parker’s] statements one by one and denouncing them as falsehoods. Grant is a broken reed to lean upon, for Parker is continually playing on him and using him for his own purposes. I fear now that the bill will not pass but I am very glad to have got Parker in the open where I could nail him. He is a thoroughly tricky and despicable fellow but he is able and unscrupulous and it is not easy to catch him.

  The bill indeed died late that week in a (Republican-dominated) senate committee in Albany, and Roosevelt went to the circus on Saturday, where at least the clowns wore makeup.

  Frustrated, TR needed help in his battle against Parker, something akin to a deus ex machina, when in Greek drama a god miraculously arrives to rescue the hero.

  On Monday, April 20, Roosevelt received an anonymous tip; a letter writer stated that he had overheard two new officers, whom he named, at the West 47th Street Precinct bragging that they had bought their appointments through … Andrew D. Parker.

  Roosevelt ordered the two patrolmen brought to him immediately. One forcefully denied paying any bribe; the other, a young recruit named Charles McMorrow, confessed.

  McMorrow had worked the previous year as a night watchman at Everard’s Brewery, but when he decided he wanted to become a policeman, he took the advice of a fellow Everard employee, James Coyle, to contact an officer at the Delancey Street station.

  McMorrow approached James Devaney at his home at 353 West 53rd Street and Devaney said he could help him. He told McMorrow that he knew a high-ranking “clubman” at a Republican Club who controlled several places on the police. McMorrow would have to pay a $400 initiation fee to join the club. McMorrow told Devaney he had never heard of arrangements like that but Devaney assured him this was the best way to do it.