The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (102 page)

A
MONG OTHER SUPERLATIVES
lavished on Roosevelt next morning was a telegram from the venerable Senator George F. Hoar, patriarch of the Republican party:

“That was pretty good of the old man, was it not?” Roosevelt exulted to Cabot Lodge. “I was really greatly flattered.”
¹¹¹

In the same letter he acknowledged that his uncompromising attitude had sharply polarized the press. For a couple of months virtually every newspaper in the city had eulogized him—but now, almost overnight, “the
World, Herald, Sun, Journal
and
Advertiser
are shrieking with rage; and the [German-American]
Staats-Zeitung
is fairly epileptic.” He could still count on the support of the
Tribune
and
Times
, and also, to his ironic amusement, E. L. Godkin’s
Evening Post
. “However I don’t care a snap of my finger; my position is impregnable; I am going to fight whatever the opposition is.”
¹¹²

If the “yellow,” or working-man’s press was shrieking then, its clamor rose to levels of real bedlam in the weeks that followed, as the weather grew hotter and the Sunday spigots ran drier. The
World
and
Herald
devoted page after full page to “Teddy’s Folly,” caricaturing him as a Puritan Dutchman bent on driving innocent citizens out of New Amsterdam. With such active encouragement, about half a million citizens did indeed leave town on Sunday, 21 July, to slake their thirsts in the country pubs of Long Island and New Jersey.
¹¹³
They raised their tankards and drank many a bitter toast to Roosevelt’s downfall, while Presbyterian ministers and temperance societies sang hymns to his praise.

Controversy builds political stature, and Roosevelt saw no
reason to be alarmed by the extremes of hostility and admiration his name seemed to arouse. Even the
Commercial Advertiser
saw that “the most despised and at the same time the best-loved man in the country” was destined for higher office. “Will he succeed Col. Strong as Mayor; or Levi P. Morton as Governor; or Grover Cleveland as President?”
¹¹⁴

I
NSPIRED BY
a midnight prowl on 23 July, which found every policeman on the Lower East Side patrolling with clockwork efficiency, Roosevelt announced that the following Sunday, the sixth of his campaign, would be “the dryest New York has ever known.”
¹¹⁵
His prophecy proved correct: one newspaper compared the metropolis to the Sahara. A few side-doors were open for privileged customers, but the masses were obliged to go thirsty. Chewing-gum boys reported record sales; bums on the Bowery went into delirium tremens for lack of alcohol; one elderly lady was seen crossing over to Long Island City with an empty beer bucket. Fashionable neighborhoods were deserted as all who could afford to left town for the day. Some well-to-do youths chartered a pleasure-boat, recruited a band and a bevy of girls in white muslin, and cruised off to Idlewild Grove, towing two bargefuls of iced ale.
¹¹⁶

Roosevelt, relaxing with his family at Oyster Bay, could not be reached for comment, but Commissioner Grant was in the city, and expressed doubt that the poor were really suffering. “Everybody would get on beautifully in hot weather,” he suggested, “if they would drink warm weak tea.”
¹¹⁷

At midnight a downtown saloonkeeper named Levy, who had studied the statute-book and found that the hour from
12:00 P.M
. Sunday to
1:00 A.M
. Monday was not covered by any law, flagrantly opened his doors. Word traveled fast, and for the next hour saloons all over town were brilliant with lights and festivity.
¹¹⁸
“
MR. ROOSEVELT IS BEATEN
,” claimed the
Sun
next morning, but it was plain he was not. The very scrupulousness with which Levy had observed the letter of the law testified to the efficiency of the Police Department in executing it.

As dry Sunday followed dry Sunday through the heat of August,
public resentment of Roosevelt smoldered. The English poet John Masefield, then working as a pot-boy in a New York saloon, “often heard men wondering how soon he would be shot.”
¹¹⁹
On 5 August a clerk at the post office tore open a suspicious-looking package addressed to Roosevelt, and was startled by “a puff of flame and smoke.” Miraculously, all that had exploded was a match-fuse on the wrapper: inside lay a live cartridge embedded in gunpowder.

Roosevelt dismissed the letter-bomb as “a cheap thing,” and refused to look at it.
¹²⁰
The campaign went on.

R
OOSEVELT’S ASTONISHING
national prestige, so at odds with his unpopularity in New York, continued to grow. “The whole country, it seemed, was talking about Theodore Roosevelt,” wrote Avery Andrews. “It liked what he was doing.” Word of his exploits spread even to London, where the
Times
described him as a “police Rhadamanthus” ruling Mulberry Street “with undisputed sway.” His three colleagues, especially the excellent Parker, were supporting him to a man, and Acting Chief Conlin, although nominally in independent control of the force, was content to obey his orders. Crimes were down, arrests up, corruption clearly on the wane;
¹²¹
Roosevelt had every reason to congratulate himself, and did not hesitate to do so.

Familiar signs of self-satisfaction appeared in his behavior. He began to talk in private as if he were on a platform, pausing after every sentence to watch its effect on the listener.
¹²²
His youthful love of flamboyant dress was revived in a summer outfit, the like of which had never been seen at Police Headquarters. It consisted of a straw English boater, a pink shirt, and a black silk cummerbund whose tasseled ends dangled down to his knees.
¹²³
“Bustling, jocose, and rubicund,” he would burst into Board meetings and impulsively sweep up piles of documents awaiting action. “These relate to civil service matters. With the Board’s permission I will decide them all.”
¹²⁴
The word “I” invaded his speeches to such an extent that the
Herald
took to reproducing it in bold type: the effect on a column of gray newsprint was of buckshot at close range.
¹²⁵

The success of Roosevelt’s crusade was helped by his early insistence
that he was acting out of duty, not bluenosed morality. But the temptation to preach, always strong in him, became irresistible on 7 August, when he appeared at the Catholic Total Abstinence Union’s national convention in Carnegie Hall. Sharing the platform with him were Mayor Strong, Commissioner Parker, and a phalanx of clergymen, headed by Archbishop Corrigan of New York. “Big Tim” O’Sullivan, a State Senator from Tammany Hall, represented the forces of iniquity.
¹²⁶

After a mass chorus of “While We Are Marching for Temperance,” sung to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia,” Senator O’Sullivan rose to give the first speech. He had not joined in the singing, and proceeded to make plain his contempt for “the Puritan’s gloomy Sabbath.” To an uproar of hisses and boos, he declared that the Excise Law discriminated against “the orderly citizen who drinks in moderation,” while encouraging the real drunkard to lay in supplies of hard liquor, and souse in front of his family.

Roosevelt’s face, during this speech, was a study of majestic disapproval. Throwing aside his prepared text, he followed O’Sullivan to the lectern and soothed the raging audience with a full display of his teeth. “I want to express my gratitude to the Catholic Church,” he intoned, “because it stands manfully for temperance, and for a day of rest and innocent enjoyment.” The next thirty minutes were devoted to a conversational defense of himself and his policies, remarkable for the roars of applause that greeted every quiet cadence. For the most part it was standard stuff, but Roosevelt inserted paragraphs of temperance rhetoric which worked his seven thousand listeners into a frenzy of righteous fervor. Senator O’Sullivan was mentioned only occasionally, in tones of sympathetic sorrow, as a lost sheep to be mourned by the rest of the flock. “Rub it in to him, Teddy,” yelled a voice, and Roosevelt swung into his peroration:

“Never in my life,” he wrote afterward, “did I receive such an ovation.” It was fully five minutes before order could be restored. Commissioner Parker ran over to shake his hand, followed by a score of delighted priests. If the
World
is to be believed, Mayor Strong “actually stood up and cheered … while State Senator O’Sullivan looked as uncomfortable as any man could possibly look.”
¹²⁸

Reading the text of Roosevelt’s speech eight decades later, one is struck, as so often with his oratory, by the ordinariness of the language which aroused such enthusiasm. Yet the words, banal as they are, are arranged with consummate skill. At no point that evening did he espouse the doctrine of total abstinence; he made no specific condemnation of drink; yet somehow he managed to convince seven thousand diehard prohibitionists that he was wholly on their side. Experts in the study of mass-manipulation techniques could only shake their heads in admiration. “You are rushing so rapidly to the front,” wrote Henry Cabot Lodge, “that the day is not far distant when you will come into a large kingdom.”
¹²⁹

R
OOSEVELT WORKED HARDER
during the hot months of 1895 than ever before in his life.
¹³⁰
In addition to a grinding routine of ten- and twelve-hour days, interrupted only by rare weekends at Sagamore Hill, he expounded his board’s policy “again and again in packed halls on the East Side … with temperatures at boiling point, both as regards the weather and the audiences.” Boos greeted his every appearance, but he exuded such charm, vigor, and sincerity (flashing his teeth upon request, and dancing polkas with the girls of the Tee-To-Tum Club) that he usually bowed out to cheers.
¹³¹