The Police Commish

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Roosevelt was settling in at 300 Mulberry Street, the police headquarters, when he embarked on what would be the costliest struggle of his tenure. He decided to enforce the moribund blue law against Sunday drinking. In a New York minute, he went from lauded to loathed. Fearlessly, he vowed not to back down. "Dry Sundays" led Manhattanites to flee to Coney Island for a beer; 540,000 mugs were sold one Sunday. German Americans, missing their beer gardens, held an anti-Roosevelt parade. Two mail bombs arrived and were defused. "I would rather see this administration turned out for enforcing laws than see it succeed for violating them," Roosevelt proclaimed. Privately, though, he agonized. "I have now run up against an ugly snag, the Sunday Excise Law," he wrote to Anna. "It is altogether too strict, but I have no honorable alternative save to enforce it and I am enforcing it, to the furious rage of the saloon keepers, and of many good people too; for which I am sorry."

The situation turned even bleaker for Commissioner Roosevelt when his fellow Republicans passed an ill-conceived law to crack down on what little legal Sunday drinking remained, mainly at hotels. The Raines Law decreed that only hotels with 10 or more rooms could serve alcohol with a meal on Sundays. Within weeks, almost every saloon, beer dive and dance hall in the city transformed itself into a "Raines Law hotel." Tavern owners thumbed their nose at Teddy. "Ten beers and one hard-boiled egg scarcely constitute a meal," groused Roosevelt, but wink-wink Tammany judges disagreed, one even stating that 17 beers and a pretzel were sufficiently nourishing to qualify.

Even more infuriating to Roosevelt, prostitutes and unmarried couples began renting--by the hour--those 10 hastily constructed rooms over the bar. Meanwhile, Roosevelt fell into an ongoing feud with a scheming fellow commissioner, Andrew Parker, which stalemated the board. "I cannot shoot him or engage in a rough-and-tumble with him," Roosevelt lamented. The would-be reformer was bogging down, spending his time giving out awards for stopping runaway carriages.

By August 1896, a scant 15 months into the job, Roosevelt was seeking to escape. As William McKinley's presidential campaign began gearing up, he mentioned to an influential McKinley backer, Maria Storer, that his dream job was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt began passionately campaigning for McKinley, electrifying crowds from Massachusetts to North Dakota.

McKinley was elected, but Roosevelt was dour on his own prospects."This is the last office I shall ever hold," he told a friend. "I have offended so many powerful interests and so many powerful politicians." The President-elect was indeed wary. "I am told your friend Theodore is always getting into rows with everybody," he informed Mrs. Storer. "I am afraid he is too pugnacious." But at the last moment, McKinley relented.

His legacy as police commissioner? He helped introduce a bicycle squad and pistol-shooting practice. Vice triumphed, but Roosevelt survived with his honor intact and with an enlarged sympathy for the struggles of the poor. "He is a fighter, a man of indomitable pluck and energy," wrote the Washington Post. "A field of immeasurable usefulness awaits him. Will he find it?"

Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter, is at work on a book about police commissioner Roosevelt