Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

  Some in the soaking-hot upper galleries began to leave, then an occasional person below. “The filling of the Garden was in fact very bunglingly done,” observed the New York Times in an arch editorial.

  But it is a pleasure to be able to say that the emptying of it was accomplished without any danger or confusion … The managers of the meeting accomplished this perfectly. They employed for this purpose an expert, in the person of William J. Bryan of Nebraska…​After Mr. Bryan had been talking about ten minutes people began to go out quietly without haste or crowding. As he continued, the stream of outgoers gradually increased … It was a steady gradual dispersion that endangered nobody’s life nor even made anybody uncomfortable. It took Mr. Bryan nearly two hours to complete his task but when he ceased speaking he had reduced the crowd to dimensions so moderate that the remnant could disperse at once without any danger.

  Bryan showed some life in the last few minutes of his speech but by then the Garden was half filled.

  As Roosevelt gleefully wrote to Lodge: “Bryan fell perfectly flat here.”

  On the day after the Bryan fiasco (now day eight of the heat wave), various heads of the municipal government of New York City held an emergency meeting to devise ways to help the heat-prostrated masses. Among other ideas, such as soaking the Tenderloin, the Board of Estimate approved an emergency fund of $5,000 to buy ice, to be distributed to the poor by the police.

  Roosevelt resisted the temptation to spend nights in the breezes of Oyster Bay and remained in the sweltering metropolis to observe and make sure ice was indeed distributed. The city quickly purchased ninety-three tons of ice at four dollars a ton. Horses hauled wagonloads of it. Hundreds lined up at sunset at the station houses to collect a free ten-pound chunk of ice. (Police captains were authorized to buy extra axes to chop the ice.) Roosevelt visited four nearby precincts: Oak, Liberty, Madison, and Mulberry, and estimated that about 1,000 persons received ice.

  Most families sent children to collect the ice since the police would be less likely to accuse the family of being too well off to qualify. “What does your father do?” the officers would typically ask. The children began lining up at 4 p.m., carrying tin pails and buckets and pots for the 6 p.m. delivery. When the wagons failed to come on time to the Madison Street station, the children there began banging on the pots, creating a deafening din.

  The Board of Health was also sending out eighteen wagons to haul away dead horses, seven carcasses per trip. They also sent out smaller wagons to spray disinfectant. The most fast-paced city in the nation was slogging forward in slow motion.

  The heat wave finally broke on August 14 as cooling showers and light breezes lifted the stinking wet blanket off the city. The temperature dropped ten degrees.

  In the newly merciful weather, Roosevelt personally oversaw preparations for that evening’s Republican “Sound Money” speech on the gold standard at Madison Square Garden by Bourke Cockran; doors would open at 6 p.m. instead of Bryan’s 7 p.m.; no one without a ticket would be let in. That night, an overflow crowd of 12,000 was smoothly handled. No complaints for this Republican event. Cockran delivered a rollicking speech that had the audience cheering wildly. The euphoria was relayed to McKinley in Canton.

  The Police Board called a “special meeting” for Thursday, August 20, to address the contentious issue of promotions to inspector. Roosevelt was leaving the following morning for an extended vacation out west.

  The World would later say of the meeting: “Prize fights have been conducted in a more orderly manner.” The Herald headline was WAR IN THE BOARD. Andrews stormed out of the meeting; Roosevelt shouted at Parker; Parker calmly and maddeningly talked on, refusing on technical grounds to approve the promotions of the the two Roosevelt favorites, Brooks and McCullagh.

  The following morning Roosevelt rode by carriage with his luggage to a Hudson River pier to catch the ferry to Jersey City. He boarded the train heading west. His trunks contained at least one new rifle.

  To some, the Badlands were bleak; to Roosevelt, they were a wide empty grassy place, filled with cattle, magpies, hawks, sheep, and the occasional cowboy, where he went to repair his soul and to recalibrate his nervous system.

  Camping out under a sprawling mantle of stars, galloping after antelope, hunting, Roosevelt would shed the grimy police department and distance himself from New York City. He would also find time to campaign for McKinley.

  hen Roosevelt returned from his three weeks out west, he looked ruddy and sunburned. After getting over the initial disappointment of discovering his cattle herd thin and sickly, he had spent the next twelve consecutive glorious days “riding over the great plains and sleeping in the open at night.” He especially enjoyed testing out his new toy, a smokeless Winchester rifle, featuring cutting-edge half-jacketed .30 caliber bullets.

  Newspapers around the country picked up the Omaha World-Herald’s feature on TR the cowboy, delivering that widely appealing image of a Knickerbocker heir, a member of the Harvard East Coast elite, riding and bronco-busting with the last heroes of the frontier. “Roosevelt cannot see a dozen yards away without his glasses, but he can do some fancy [rifle] shooting that would win applause at a Wild West show.”

  After expanding his lungs with prairie air, Roosevelt had found time to squeeze in two days at Republican headquarters in Chicago, scrutinizing reports from throughout the region. He analyzed Republican prospects state by state for Lodge (“affairs are very much demoralized in Michigan but we shall win,” “in Iowa the defection has been very great”). He personally checked the leanings of the ranchers and cowhands in his own desolate neighborhood. “The Dakotas are a little against us but with proper care, I believe there is at least an even chance of carrying them,” he wrote. “There is a great need of money to spend in an entirely legitimate way for educational purposes.”

  With the clarity from his weeks in the Badlands, Roosevelt seemed now to be even more committed to exploring his options outside the police department. He would never admit surrender or retreat—his personality forbade it—but he began to write more often of having “done nearly all I could do.” While his letters finesse the topic of exiting, his actions over the fall show him missing numerous meetings and traveling again and again to deliver campaign speeches for McKinley.

  In mid-September, Henry Cabot Lodge relayed to Roosevelt the stellar news that the Massachusetts senator had convinced the New York State Republican Party to allow TR to accompany him on a series of joint campaign appearances upstate. The only catch was that Roosevelt must go meet several high-ranking local Republicans to confirm the assignment. TR instantly replied that he was “overjoyed” and would do so.

  The meeting was bound to be awkward because the New York Republican machine—run statewide by Thomas Collier Platt and citywide by Edward Lauterbach—had not forgiven Roosevelt for his Sunday liquor crackdown that had boosted Tammany and capsized the local elections a year earlier. They also resented that Roosevelt stuck by his credo to be a nonpartisan city official and refused to fight outright for Republican appointments, a point that Parker had tried to exploit.

  Roosevelt, like a schoolboy taking his medicine, recounted to Lodge his visit to the “gentlemen who have been endeavoring to get my scalp for the last year or two.” He relayed: “We greeted one another with hilarious politeness.”

  He added candidly, “The lovely Lauterbach was prominent among them; I never can help being amused with that graceless sheeny.” (The published volume of letters states “graceless person”; a “sheeny” was a mildly derogatory term for a Jew.)

  Roosevelt had already given one campaign speech in New York City at a “Sound Money” luncheon on Friday and apparently impressed the highest-ranking Republicans with his take-no-prisoners tone. He had sawed the air, he had used props such as oversized silver and gold coins, he had spewed venom. At that luncheon, TR accused Bryan’s “Free Silver” supporters of violating the Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” He called farmers “the basest se
t in the land.” Roosevelt was discovering that audiences preferred his harshest rants—which were so extreme that they were amusing—to his attempts at reasoned discourse.

  A star pit-bull campaigner was born.

  The committee decided to forbid Roosevelt from appearing with Senator Lodge and Governor Black at the opening salvo in New York City, where his popularity had waned. Instead, they approved him to join Lodge for an upstate swing past Utica and on to Buffalo, all conservative strongholds. Roosevelt and Lodge left the city on September 28 on a specially reserved railroad train and spent the next three days zigzagging through the fall foliage, giving whistle-stop and big hall speeches. Roosevelt reported to his sister that standing-room-only crowds followed them and Cabot made “remarkably good speeches.” He rated himself as doing “well enough.” In Utica, TR called Bryan’s ideas “silly and wicked enough to fit well in the mouth of an anarchist leader”; in Gloversville, New York, Lucius N. Littauer, the nation’s largest glove manufacturer, introduced him and he spoke to an overflow crowd of 3,000 persons at the Kasson Opera House.

  In addition to this jaunt through western New York, Lodge invited TR along to pay a flying visit to McKinley in Canton. That posed a small dilemma for Roosevelt. He had promised the Storers that he would not visit Canton without them. He wrote a note to Bellamy apprising him that he might swing by Canton with Lodge but he left further details vague.

  A steady parade of supplicants was marching up Canton’s patriotically festooned North Market Street. A delegation of 300 farmers from West Virginia and 600 railroad workers from Ohio and Illinois had just hit town, and their leaders were preparing to make speeches. Since both Lodge and TR had supported Reed of Maine for president literally for years—even once backing him over McKinley to be House Speaker—they now had to convince McKinley of their newfound allegiance.

  The campaigning duo arrived past midnight on October 1 and clerks at an overflowing hotel had to squeeze the senator and the police commissioner into “a garret room.” After a few hours’ sleep, they prepared to walk to McKinley’s home but three days of rain had reduced the candidate’s lawn to mud, so they were told to go to a place called the Tabernacle. They talked with McKinley, a confident, clean-shaven fifty-three-year-old Civil War veteran, on a day when callers included three congressmen and two sons of former presidents: Harry Garfield and Rutherford Hayes.

  Roosevelt could genuinely embrace most of McKinley’s platform, especially the key economic tenets, although the New Yorker was more hawkish in foreign policy. “McKinley is bearing himself well,” he wrote to Bamie. “He was entirely pleasant with us, though we are not among his favorites.” Roosevelt’s frank assessment jibed with Maria Storer’s candid opinion.

  Despite the bland McKinley welcome, Roosevelt had certainly enjoyed his stumping tour; he enjoyed almost any activity away from 300 Mulberry. He gushed to Lodge that “it was simply delightful to be with you for the five days.”

  Roosevelt, however, never saw Bellamy or Maria Storer in Canton, and several notes have survived in which he tried to finesse the slight. The Storers apparently did not respond to the first. (“Did you get my note about the Canton incident?”) He later added: “I was more sorry than I can say that we failed to get together there, as I did not much care to see our President-to-be except with you for various reasons.”

  Back in New York, although Roosevelt’s two main priorities were hiring 800 new recruits and ensuring a fair election, he also found time to aid Reverend Parkhurst in his Captain Ahab–like pursuit of “Big Bill” Devery.

  Big Bill’s command of the 125th Street precinct for the past four months had been uneventful; he had maintained order and was already popular with the men. No civilian complaints marred his record.

  Parkhurst, however, with no desire to forgive or forget, contacted Roosevelt about bringing new charges against Devery. Roosevelt’s right-hand man, Commissioner Andrews, introduced a resolution at the Wednesday, October 7, board meeting to hire Frank Moss, Parkhurst Society lawyer, as special counsel to reinvestigate various cases against Devery. Moss had overseen the original Parkhurst investigation of Devery (1892), had defended Charlie Gardner when accused of extortion by Devery (1893), and had acted as Lexow interrogator of Devery (1894). No man knew Devery’s delinquencies better than Moss. The resolution passed.

  Roosevelt then instructed Chief Conlin to aid Frank Moss and to turn over the 11th Police precinct blotters from 1893 to him. Conlin forwarded the order to the precinct and Moss gathered the oversized daily blotters. Someone at Eldridge Street leaked word to the press.

  Devery was furious when he found out. He unleashed a torrent of wounded outrage to the Herald.

  “I have been nineteen years in the service and have never had a citizen’s complaint against me. I have been tried in the courts and have been honorably acquitted of the charges this [Parkhurst] Society brought against me. This man Moss has been a witness against me and now he is to be my prosecutor and the books of the department have been placed at his disposal … I arrested their agent Gardner for blackmail and since that time they have persecuted me … Who is my counsel? I have none and no money to employ one. They have already robbed me of eighteen years of my savings.” Then he added, under his breath: “They have taught me enough to be my own lawyer.”

  The New York World twitted TR over meddling in the case. “It is remarkable that lawyer Moss, a private citizen, should be allowed to go to a police station and carry away the blotters for inspection,” carped the World. “No other citizen would be allowed to do such a thing.” Several newspapers tried to roast Roosevelt but the board president took the time to investigate the Devery specifics. He “most emphatically” denied any persecution of Tammany’s Devery. He pointed out that the courts had overturned Devery’s dismissal in August 1894 on procedural grounds because the board had tried him in absentia and not allowed him an illness delay. Roosevelt contended that that sort of technical reversal “left the case exactly where it was in the beginning” and open for a new hearing.

  He also claimed—not very convincingly—that hiring Moss was a simple matter of manpower. “No one Commissioner would be able to go over all these cases and sift them.” Devery was back in the crosshairs.

  Roosevelt, that October, in any case, was far more interested in a different prize, the upcoming election. Oddsmakers by the middle of the month had McKinley as an overwhelming favorite at four to one, but some change of sentiment and heavy money on Bryan from the West was starting to shift the odds to three to one. The World reported that a Montana silver king offered $100,000 against $300,000 if Bryan won but found no takers at Republican headquarters. Man-to-man election bets were legal then (and are still legal now).

  Newspapers reported a straight‑up bet of $6,000 was offered at Hoffman House and Delmonico’s that McKinley would not win New York State by more than 150,000 votes. Two New York bookies took the bet and the money was placed at the Second National Bank.

  Some Republicans, in their darkest moments, feared that Bryan might squeak out a victory, rallying the West and the South and snatching some extra states in the Midwest.

  TR reached Chicago to speak on Thursday, October 15, at the massive Coliseum under the auspices of the American Republican College League. A rollicking enthusiastic crowd of 13,000 awaited him.

  McKinley remained on his Ohio porch with his ill wife. The Republican campaign planners were sending out a battalion of surrogates to plead his case for leading the country back from the fiscal miasma of 1893. Mark Hanna and the top men apparently appreciated Roosevelt’s performances so far because they gave him this plum assignment of addressing huge rallies in Chicago and Detroit and of traveling in Illinois and Michigan in the footsteps of the Democratic candidate himself, Bryan.

  TR’s letters around this time reveal a renewed vigor; he clearly was enjoying these national political battles.

  Around 7 p.m. on a Thursday night in Chicago, the Second Regiment Band began playing patriotic
songs as the bunting-draped hall filled up. The crowd neared a fever pitch of enthusiasm when Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Lincoln, introduced his fellow Harvard graduate Theodore Roosevelt. The jacketed college men chanted “Teddy,” “Teddy,” “Teddy” over and over and applauded for long minutes.

  Roosevelt, riding the fervor, gave an impassioned speech, one that so impressed the Chicago Daily Tribune that it printed the text word for word starting on the front page. “I let myself go and I hit at the [Silver Democrats] as hard as I knew how,” he later wrote to his sister.

  Roosevelt lumped Bryan with other dangerous demagogues, such as Socialist Eugene V. Debs; he compared him to Robespierre and other guillotine-wielding fanatics of the French Revolution. He claimed the Bryan campaign was waging a war against “morality and ability,” a campaign against “men who pay their debts and obey the laws.”

  Roosevelt was rewarded again and again with thunderous applause.

  “Instead of a government of the people, for the people and by the people, which we now have, Mr. Bryan would substitute a government of a mob, by the demagogue, and for the shiftless and disorderly and the criminal and the semi-criminal.”

  The audience cheered and stomped their feet. Arriving armed with various props, Roosevelt now held up two loaves of bread, a small one that he called a “five-cent loaf,” the other one, twice the size, an eight-cent one. TR said under Bryan the five-cent loaf would cost more than nine cents because Bryan opposed a fat dollar, and therefore under Bryan’s “lean dollar,” all items would cost more.

  The two-hour speech marked a huge success for Roosevelt and perhaps a turning point in his public speaking. His new formula: entertainingly demonizing the opposition and waving the flag. “I made a success of it and got in good form and spoke to immense audiences, who always listened attentively and sometimes as in Chicago and Detroit, went mad with enthusiasm.”