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LIFE AND WORK OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL

 CHAPTER SIX 

RETURN TO PUBLIC LIFE

Candidate for Mayor of New York—Second Marriage— Ideal Domestic Life—Civil Service Commissioner— Police Commissioner of New York—His Unusual Methods—Resigns to Become Secretary of the Navy.
Bronzed by the outdoor life, and teeming with hard-won vitality, Mr. Roosevelt returned to New York from his ranch in 1886 on the eve of a mayoralty campaign. His return was in reality a recall, for in his absence he had been nominated by an independent Committee of One Hundred and by the Republican party as the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York against Abram S. Hewitt, who had been nominated by Tammany. Local Republicanism had concluded that one known so widely as a reformer, through his work in the Legislature, would make an excellent candidate against the Democratic choice.

But there was also in the race the noted apostle of the single tax idea, Henry George, as the candidate of the United Labor party, and a hot campaign resulted.

In accepting the nomination of the independent Committee of One Hundred, Mr. Roosevelt wrote:

"The worst evils that affect our local government arise from and are the inevitable results of the mixing up of city affairs with the party politics of the nation and of the State. The lines upon which national parties divide have no necessary connection with the business of the city. Such connection opens the way to countless schemes of public plunder and civic corruption. I earnestly deprecate all attempts to introduce any class or caste feeling into the mayoralty contest."

Nevertheless, the appeal to these very feelings was strongly made in this campaign. Something very much like a panic was created among the business classes, with the result that thousands of voters forsook party, and doubtless influenced to some extent by the high qualifications of Mr. Hewitt, east their votes for the Tammany nominee in their dread lest Henry George be elected. The result was that Mr. Hewitt was chosen and Roosevelt sustained his first defeat as a candidate for public office. He came out third in the fight, with a total of 60,435 votes, against the 90,552 for Hewitt and 68,110 for Henry George. Roosevelt and his cohorts got whatever happiness they could out of the fact that his vote—in proportion to the total number of votes cast—showed the biggest total ever before cast for a Republican mayoralty candidate in Manhattan.
His Second Marriage
Soon after the election in 1886 Mr. Roosevelt sailed for England, and there married Miss Edith Kermit Carow. The ceremony took place in the famous St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London, and the officiating clergyman was a canon of the English church who was a cousin of the bride.

Though married in London, Mrs. Roosevelt, who survives the Colonel, is an American and a New Yorker by birth. Her great-grandfather, however, Benjamin Lee, Was an Englishman who served in the British Navy during the War of the Revolution. At one time he was sentenced to be shot for disobeying orders concerning prisoners in his care. He disobeyed them because he believed the orders to be unjust and his life was saved through the intercession of a brother-officer who afterwards became William IV, the first sailor King of Great Britain. Benjamin Lee came to America after the Revolution and gained a commission as captain in the United States Navy.

Another great-grandfather of Mrs. Roosevelt fought at Bunker Hill under General Putnam. She is descended from an old family of French Huguenots who settled in New York about the time that the founder of the Roosevelt’s came from Holland.

Mr. Roosevelt and Miss Carow had known each other since childhood, she and his sister being schoolmates. Their union was a singularly fortunate and congenial one, blessed by happiness that was only ended by death. Of their marriage four sons and a daughter were born, Theodore, Jr., Kermit, Archibald, Quentin, and Ethel. Only the close friends of Colonel Roosevelt comprehended his love of family, his adoration of domestic simplicity and, indeed, what an immense part Mrs. Roosevelt played in his career. She was very often the restraining influence upon his characteristic impulsiveness.

Ideal Domestic Life
No married couple ever lived a more happy, tranquil life. Mrs. Roosevelt has been noted for her graceful mastery of every social situation and few Presidential ladies that ever adorned the White House had more success than she in cultivating and preserving all of the traditions of dignified hospitality that belonged to the mansion of Presidents.

Up to the day of his sudden and lamented death, Colonel Roosevelt never failed to pass the highest praise and the most fragrant and enduring tributes to Mrs. Roosevelt. "No woman in the history of the world," said a recent writer, "had so many opportunities to enjoy the limelight of public applause and yet, with modesty, refrained. In Mrs. Roosevelt we see the devoted, loving wife and mother who illuminates in her graceful modesty the highest type of genuine womanhood."

Ignored by the Bosses
On his return to America, some months after his marriage, Mr. Roosevelt took up his literary work and resumed his political connections in New York. But the bosses, having learned to know him, and to know that he could not be "used," gave him no chance to get into a position where he could make trouble for them. They did their little best to ignore him.

Still owning the Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota, Mr. Roosevelt passed most of his vacations on the great plains for several years more, though his active ranching days were done. The family life claimed him, but his opportunities for public service were at hand.

In the Presidential campaign of 1888 he went on the stump for Benjamin Harrison. When Harrison was elected he tendered his services to the new administration, and hoped to be appointed Assistant Secretary of State. But James G. Blaine was the new Secretary of State, and he had reason to remember his young New York opponent in the Chicago convention of 1884. Mr. Roosevelt therefore was not appointed to the State Department. His destiny was already at work.
Civil Service Commissioner
In May, 1889, President Harrison remembered Roosevelt’s fight in the New York State Assembly for Civil Service reform, and appointed him a United States Civil Service Commissioner. Immediately he jumped into a programme of Civil Service uplift that met with instant opposition from Congressmen, largely from the South and Southwest, who saw their patronage privileges going by the board if the Roosevelt programme was effected.

There upon Commissioner Roosevelt executed what was considered a brilliant coup; he instituted the practice of having the examinations for positions in Washington held in different states; and straightway many a Congressman who knew by this plan pet constituents would have to take examinations under the eyes of men who often were not of the same political faith, became converted on the spot to the beauties of civil service.

For six years his constant warfare with the spoilsmen kept up an unending commotion among the politicians. He thought nothing of antagonizing even the greatest leaders in the Senate.

When he became president of the Civil Service Commission 14,000 Government offices were under Civil Service rules; when he left, in 1895, to run the New York police, 40,000 offices were under Civil Service rules, and the increase was due chiefly to his energy and persistence. He served throughout Harrison's administration, and was retained in office by President Cleveland, whom he had helped, ten years before, to establish the Civil Service on a firmer basis in New York State.

His six years spent at Washington as Civil Service Commissioner proved a splendid training for Roosevelt in a wider field than he had hitherto entered. He had won the friendship and regard of public men from all parts of the country; even those who were not in entire sympathy with the reforms which he represented recognized his sincerity, fairness, and energy.

Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward Civil Service and the urgent need of it is succinctly set forth in the opening of one of his essays on that subject. "No question of internal administration," he declared, "is so important to the United States as the question of Civil Service reform, because the spoils system, which can be supplanted only through the agencies which have found expression in the act creating the Civil Service Commission has been for seventy years the most potent of all the forces tending to bring about the degradation of our politics. No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base; and the spoils system, the application in political life of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belong the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. The man who is in politics for the offices might just as well be in politics for the money he can get for his vote, so far as the general good is concerned. The worst enemies of the republic are the demagogue and the corruptionist. The spoils-monger and the spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and the bribe-giver, the embezzler of public funds, and the corrupter of voters. Civil Service reform is not merely a movement to better public service. It achieves this end too; but its main purpose is to raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direction that its effects have been of incalculable good to the whole community."

Police Commissioner of New York
( Mr. Roosevelt resigned as Civil Service Commissioner May 5, 1895, and on May 24 accepted the appointment of Police Commissioner of New York City, tendered him by Mayor Strong. His associates on the board were Andrew D. Parker, Frederick D. Grant, and Avery D. Andrews. Mr. Roosevelt was chosen president of the board, and from the first stamped his personality on the department.

The election of Mayor Strong had been caused by the Lexow exposures of police corruption in New York, and the new Mayor realized that the problem of police management would be the crucial one of his administration. He had therefore urged Mr. Roosevelt to take charge of it, and the successful Civil Service Commissioner resigned for that express purpose.

The new board found the force in a thoroughly demoralized and disorganized condition. Its first effort was to bring order out of chaos by enforcing discipline and substituting dismissals for the absurdly light penalties heretofore imposed for insubordination and infraction of the police regulations. In twenty months there were 169 dismissals, as compared with 76 in the four years preceding.

A storm immediately burst about Mr. Roosevelt's head, almost as great as that which he encountered in reforming the Civil Service. He entered vigorously upon the reorganization of the police force, and demanded the rigid enforcement of all laws and ordinances. He was warned by cautious friends that other commissioners had tried the same thing and had failed; that the force was so honeycombed with petty jealousies and favoritism and blackmail that the board could never ascertain the truth about what the men were doing. Roosevelt, though he knew he had a Gibraltar of corruption to fight, smiled and said: "Well, we will see about that," and see about it he did literally, for he personally sought the patrolmen on their beats at unexpected hours of the night, interviewed them as to their duties and whenever one was found derelict he was promptly reprimanded or dismissed. The plan had a sudden and wholesome effect, for no roundsman, no sergeant or police captain knew at what hour the Commissioner might turn up and catch him napping.

His Unusual Methods
The young Police Commissioner's unbounded genius for the unusual immediately began to function. By strolling Manhattan streets late into the night he got evidence at first hand. He antagonized Jimmy Wakely, then an all-powerful prize fight backer and saloon-keeper, who had been led to believe the excise laws did not apply to the Wakely "place of business." He made police station speeches to astonished bluecoats, who for the first time heard a superior tell them that merit, not Tammany pull, would result in promotion.

He had taken the job on the condition that he would have free rein, and thereupon he drove headlong into the work. As president of the board he started in to practice what he preached, but the old Gibraltar reared a new pinnacle in the form of local laws, which said that the power of substantial reward was vested in the chief of police, not in the Police Board.

Tom Byrnes, famed as a detective throughout the land, was the chief of police. When Roosevelt went into the Police Board and insisted on enforcing the excise laws literally, Chief Byrnes said: "It will break him. He will have to yield in time. He is only human." With the idea of beginning the reform at the top Roosevelt convinced his board colleagues that the "great" Tom Byrnes should go, and a whole city started at the audacity of the idea. But into the Police Board rooms the mighty detective was summoned for an explosive interview. Ten minutes after the dust had settled Tom Byrnes, the mighty, had sent in his resignation.

Peter Conlin, acting chief, was promoted to Byrnes' job, the Commission figuring that Conlin, supposedly a weak man, would take orders and carry them out. But, unknown to Commissioner Roosevelt, Commissioner Parker did not side altogether with the Roosevelt views of police management, and Parker had great influence over Chief Conlin.

Reform Plans Smashed
For a year Conlin did Roosevelt's bidding. Then the chief grew headstrong to the point where Roosevelt found himself unable to reward policemen as he had promised or to punish where he had threatened. He faced about and began to fight from a new angle; he tried to get remedial legislation passed that would solve his police difficulties. He failed, and his reorganization work as planned went to smash.

Policemen were growing rich, he knew, by protecting saloon-keepers that steadily broke the Sunday excise law. Out came the Roosevelt dictum—despite protests from his friends that he was threatening the future success of his own entire career—that every saloon in Manhattan must obey the statute, which said saloons must close from Saturday night to Monday.

Shrieks of anguish arose the length and breadth of the island. Roosevelt's local popularity got a temporary setback. Chief Conlin seized the chance to be "with the crowd" and defied his Commissioner. The sum total of the whole excise crusade demonstrated that there were many honest policemen who would go straight if encouraged; that there were Police Commissioners who dared do their duty; that traces of a rise in the morale of the whole force were noticeable, and that—according to the Roosevelt figures—Sunday drinking had been cut down "40 per cent," while the wave lasted.

Scoffing Became Cheers
At the height of Commissioner Roosevelt's unpopularity a monster parade was organized to show New York's disgust with his policy. It paraded with such signs as "Send the Police Czar to Russia." A perfunctory invitation, or, perhaps, a sarcastic one, had been sent to him, and to everybody's astonishment he arrived early and took his seat on the reviewing stand.

Among the foremost of the paraders was a German, who looked back with pride on the great host behind him. Waving his hand, he shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Nun, wo ist der Roosevelt?" ("Where is Roosevelt now?")
A beaming face, with a bulldog grin, looked down from the stand.

" Hier bin ich. Was wilst du, Kamerad ? " (" Here I am. What do you want, comrade?")

The German stopped, paralyzed with astonishment. Then an answering grin overspread his own face.

"Hurrah for Roosevelt!" he shouted. His followers took up the cry, and those who came to scoff remained to cheer.

Under Commissioner Roosevelt a system of rewards for bravery and meritorious conduct was inaugurated, which had a salutary effect on the morale of the police force. He abolished the annual police parade, declaring "We'll parade when we need not be afraid to show ourselves. ''
It is, however, with the enforcement of the excise law that the name of Commissioner Roosevelt was always most closely associated. When he went into office it was almost a truism that the excise law could not be enforced in New York City. The Roosevelt board made up their minds to enforce it, with the result that for the first time in its history the excise law was thoroughly and honestly administered.

Of Roosevelt's time in the Police Department, Jacob Riis significantly says, "A much larger percentage of policemen than many imagine look back to that time as the golden age of the department, when every man had a show on his merits, and many of their votes are quietly cast on election day for the things 'Teddy' stands for."
His Attitude Toward Labor
With regard to Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward labor when Police Commissioner, Mr. Riis says:

"I had watched police administration in Mulberry Street for nearly twenty years, and I had seen many sparring matches between workingmen and the Police Board. Generally, there was bad faith on one side; not infrequently on both. It was human that some of the labor men should misinterpret Mr. Roosevelt's motives when, as President of the Board, he sent word that he wanted to meet them and talk strike troubles over with them. They got it into their heads, I suppose, that he had come to crawl; but they were speedily undeceived. I can see his face now, as he checked the first one who hinted at trouble. I fancy that man can see it, too—in his dreams.

" 'Gentlemen,' said Mr. Roosevelt, 'I have come to get your point of view, and see if we can't agree to help each other out. But we want to make it clear to ourselves at the start that the greatest damage any working-man can do to his cause is to counsel violence. Order must be maintained; and make no mistake, I will maintain it.' "

The men cheered him. There was perfect confidence on both sides. Roosevelt said, "We understand each other, and will get along."

But the Gibraltar of corruption was too strong in those days even for a Roosevelt. He resigned from the department on April 17, 1897, to accept an appointment from the McKinley administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Here was a job to his liking.