THE ELECTION, continued ...
He categorically denied all men who had ever worked in saloons.
The Washington Post said he was looking to hire “saints.”
A little after midnight on the unseasonably hot Sunday, September 22, four friends, including a circus acrobat named William Coleman, who had spent the day outside of “dry” Manhattan, were walking west on 34th Street after disembarking from the Long Island ferry.
One was boisterously telling a story that involved mentions of “this officer” and “that officer” when two strangers suddenly confronted him: “Who you talkin’ to?” said one.
Coleman sassed back: “Not you!”
The stranger didn’t like Coleman’s tone.
“That’s a fresh duck; a good kick wouldn’t do him any harm.”
The words escalated, and they began fighting.
During the fracas, one of the strangers fell hard onto the pavement.
(He would never regain consciousness.)
The two strangers, it would also turn out, were plainclothes cops working undercover excise.
The surviving officer asserted that his partner Delehanty had told the young men to be quiet but that acrobat Coleman had bull-rushed Delehanty and hit him hard with a sandbag (a small leather sack of sand) and tossed it away.
It was never found.
(A bystander would later testify he saw no sandbag, nor did Coleman’s friends.)
Officer Delehanty was carried to nearby Bellevue Hospital.
Coleman was arrested.
The police version of events, of an officer brutally attacked with a sandbag, was quickly relayed to headquarters and spread through the force.
The following day, Monday, a messenger arrived with a note from doctors that, despite surgery to relieve pressure on the brain, Delehanty was dying.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
The Police Board rushed into an “executive session” closed to reporters and voted immediately to bring back the nightstick, which Superintendent Byrnes had banned three years earlier in favor of a smaller lighter billy club.
This sudden reintroduction of the symbol of the old days of “Clubber” Williams surprised many reformers.
The New York Police nightstick — a fearsome weapon especially effective during riots — measured twenty-four inches long and one and three-eighth inches in diameter; it was carved of hard locustwood and carried in a socket outside the coat.
Chief Byrnes’s billy club — or day stick — measured fourteen inches, tapering out from a one-inch handle to one and five-eighth inches at the business end, of granadilla wood, and could be slipped into a special pocket in the seam of the trousers.
“The skull-crushing, bone-breaking night club is not needed in any American city,” opined one newspaper.
“The policeman who cannot make an arrest without making a deadly assault on the citizen is not fit for the force.”
A veteran sergeant in the 1890s explained to then rookie Cornelius Willemse that once an officer gets a reputation for hammering crooks with his club, they’ll avoid his turf.
“There’s more religion in the end of a nightstick than in any sermon preached to the likes of them,” explained the sergeant.
“That doesn’t mean you’ve got to beat up drunks and boys, but when you’re dealing with real criminals, let ’em have it."
"It’s the only language they understand.”
Lincoln Steffens discovered that some cops also played a cruel game with the big club: they tried to levitate a sleeping vagrant with one swat, hitting both feet simultaneously and sending a shock up the spine.
“That bum rose, stiff like a stick,” one cop fondly reminisced to Steffens, “didn’t bend a knee or move an arm."
"I think he didn’t wake up."
"He just rose up running.”
Roosevelt — later known for his “speak softly and carry a big stick” — never wavered on this decision.
In his autobiography two decades later, he wrote that he “consistently encouraged” the men to be polite to citizens and to use force on violent lawbreakers.
“Of course where possible the officer merely crippled the criminal,” he added.
Roosevelt told reporters on September 24 that if Delehanty had carried a nightstick, he could have “easily overpowered” Coleman, with or without a sandbag.
(In his eagerness to reintroduce the weapon, Roosevelt overlooked the fact that undercover cops did not hide twenty-four-inch clubs on their person.)
TR noted that the nightsticks would first be given to officers in the 35th Street precinct, then gradually distributed citywide, roughest neighborhoods first.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The Police Board rushed into an “executive session” closed to reporters and voted immediately to bring back the nightstick, which Superintendent Byrnes had banned three years earlier in favor of a smaller lighter billy club.
This sudden reintroduction of the symbol of the old days of “Clubber” Williams surprised many reformers.
The New York Police nightstick — a fearsome weapon especially effective during riots — measured twenty-four inches long and one and three-eighth inches in diameter; it was carved of hard locustwood and carried in a socket outside the coat.
Chief Byrnes’s billy club — or day stick — measured fourteen inches, tapering out from a one-inch handle to one and five-eighth inches at the business end, of granadilla wood, and could be slipped into a special pocket in the seam of the trousers.
“The skull-crushing, bone-breaking night club is not needed in any American city,” opined one newspaper.
“The policeman who cannot make an arrest without making a deadly assault on the citizen is not fit for the force.”
A veteran sergeant in the 1890s explained to then rookie Cornelius Willemse that once an officer gets a reputation for hammering crooks with his club, they’ll avoid his turf.
“There’s more religion in the end of a nightstick than in any sermon preached to the likes of them,” explained the sergeant.
“That doesn’t mean you’ve got to beat up drunks and boys, but when you’re dealing with real criminals, let ’em have it."
"It’s the only language they understand.”
Lincoln Steffens discovered that some cops also played a cruel game with the big club: they tried to levitate a sleeping vagrant with one swat, hitting both feet simultaneously and sending a shock up the spine.
“That bum rose, stiff like a stick,” one cop fondly reminisced to Steffens, “didn’t bend a knee or move an arm."
"I think he didn’t wake up."
"He just rose up running.”
Roosevelt — later known for his “speak softly and carry a big stick” — never wavered on this decision.
In his autobiography two decades later, he wrote that he “consistently encouraged” the men to be polite to citizens and to use force on violent lawbreakers.
“Of course where possible the officer merely crippled the criminal,” he added.
Roosevelt told reporters on September 24 that if Delehanty had carried a nightstick, he could have “easily overpowered” Coleman, with or without a sandbag.
(In his eagerness to reintroduce the weapon, Roosevelt overlooked the fact that undercover cops did not hide twenty-four-inch clubs on their person.)
TR noted that the nightsticks would first be given to officers in the 35th Street precinct, then gradually distributed citywide, roughest neighborhoods first.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Throughout September, private clubs were still flouting the excise law and serving members on Sundays.
(Their lawyers argued that clubs were exempt.)
During the summer Roosevelt had announced a crackdown on “rich as well as poor,” but then had uncharacteristically backed off.
Police Chief Conlin waffled and an assistant district attorney lamely announced the impossibility of gaining admittance to gather evidence.
Town Topics advised TR to go undercover at his own Union League.
“He can hang about the clubhouse, hide in the toilet room or the cellar and burst forth like an official cyclone” or he can follow the “modern police policy of inciting the crime.”
The society weekly explained: “He can cordially invite [members] to ‘take something’ with him and arrest them if they accept.”
The Democratic convention took place September 25 in Syracuse.
Unlike the Republicans the Democrats spotlighted Sunday laws.
After giving a respectful nod to “honest enforcement of the law” and to “orderly Sundays,” the Democrats shrewdly endorsed a “local option” solution, that is, a vote by individual cities to determine their own Sunday excise laws.
“Shrewdly” because Democrats did not control either the New York State Assembly or Senate, and even if by some far-fetched miracle they gained narrow control of both houses, they would never have enough votes to override the veto of a Republican governor.
Nonetheless, despite its dismal prospects, “Local Option” delivered a better rallying cry for the Democrats than “Drink Up and Violate the Law!”
The pundits touted Tammany as poised for a comeback.
That prospect deeply infuriated Roosevelt.
He repeatedly confided to Lodge that he expected to be blamed for the defeat.
The irony galled Roosevelt.
He was running a strict law-and-order Police Board as an antidote to decades of corrupt city politics and now his stern enforcement might bring the most corrupt hustlers of Tammany back to power.
Tammany Hall, the local Democratic clubhouse, at the time ranked as one of the most dominant, most lucrative urban political machines in the nation.
The secret to Tammany’s success was no secret: favors on a grand scale equal loyalty.
Give me your vote to elect my pals and I will help you.
The organization divided the city down to the door frames of the poorest shanty.
Its ward heelers stood ready, especially eager to help the flood tides of immigrants.
Tammany had started innocently enough in 1789 as a patriotic club with faux Indian rituals; the members were still called “braves,” wore headdresses occasionally, did war chants.
It had grown successful with the waves of immigrants, and had even survived the Boss Tweed scandal of the 1870s.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Throughout September, private clubs were still flouting the excise law and serving members on Sundays.
(Their lawyers argued that clubs were exempt.)
During the summer Roosevelt had announced a crackdown on “rich as well as poor,” but then had uncharacteristically backed off.
Police Chief Conlin waffled and an assistant district attorney lamely announced the impossibility of gaining admittance to gather evidence.
Town Topics advised TR to go undercover at his own Union League.
“He can hang about the clubhouse, hide in the toilet room or the cellar and burst forth like an official cyclone” or he can follow the “modern police policy of inciting the crime.”
The society weekly explained: “He can cordially invite [members] to ‘take something’ with him and arrest them if they accept.”
The Democratic convention took place September 25 in Syracuse.
Unlike the Republicans the Democrats spotlighted Sunday laws.
After giving a respectful nod to “honest enforcement of the law” and to “orderly Sundays,” the Democrats shrewdly endorsed a “local option” solution, that is, a vote by individual cities to determine their own Sunday excise laws.
“Shrewdly” because Democrats did not control either the New York State Assembly or Senate, and even if by some far-fetched miracle they gained narrow control of both houses, they would never have enough votes to override the veto of a Republican governor.
Nonetheless, despite its dismal prospects, “Local Option” delivered a better rallying cry for the Democrats than “Drink Up and Violate the Law!”
The pundits touted Tammany as poised for a comeback.
That prospect deeply infuriated Roosevelt.
He repeatedly confided to Lodge that he expected to be blamed for the defeat.
The irony galled Roosevelt.
He was running a strict law-and-order Police Board as an antidote to decades of corrupt city politics and now his stern enforcement might bring the most corrupt hustlers of Tammany back to power.
Tammany Hall, the local Democratic clubhouse, at the time ranked as one of the most dominant, most lucrative urban political machines in the nation.
The secret to Tammany’s success was no secret: favors on a grand scale equal loyalty.
Give me your vote to elect my pals and I will help you.
The organization divided the city down to the door frames of the poorest shanty.
Its ward heelers stood ready, especially eager to help the flood tides of immigrants.
Tammany had started innocently enough in 1789 as a patriotic club with faux Indian rituals; the members were still called “braves,” wore headdresses occasionally, did war chants.
It had grown successful with the waves of immigrants, and had even survived the Boss Tweed scandal of the 1870s.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Throughout September, private clubs were still flouting the excise law and serving members on Sundays.
(Their lawyers argued that clubs were exempt.)
During the summer Roosevelt had announced a crackdown on “rich as well as poor,” but then had uncharacteristically backed off.
Police Chief Conlin waffled and an assistant district attorney lamely announced the impossibility of gaining admittance to gather evidence.
Town Topics advised TR to go undercover at his own Union League.
“He can hang about the clubhouse, hide in the toilet room or the cellar and burst forth like an official cyclone” or he can follow the “modern police policy of inciting the crime.”
The society weekly explained: “He can cordially invite [members] to ‘take something’ with him and arrest them if they accept.”
The Democratic convention took place September 25 in Syracuse.
Unlike the Republicans the Democrats spotlighted Sunday laws.
After giving a respectful nod to “honest enforcement of the law” and to “orderly Sundays,” the Democrats shrewdly endorsed a “local option” solution, that is, a vote by individual cities to determine their own Sunday excise laws.
“Shrewdly” because Democrats did not control either the New York State Assembly or Senate, and even if by some far-fetched miracle they gained narrow control of both houses, they would never have enough votes to override the veto of a Republican governor.
Nonetheless, despite its dismal prospects, “Local Option” delivered a better rallying cry for the Democrats than “Drink Up and Violate the Law!”
The pundits touted Tammany as poised for a comeback.
That prospect deeply infuriated Roosevelt.
He repeatedly confided to Lodge that he expected to be blamed for the defeat.
The irony galled Roosevelt.
He was running a strict law-and-order Police Board as an antidote to decades of corrupt city politics and now his stern enforcement might bring the most corrupt hustlers of Tammany back to power.
Tammany Hall, the local Democratic clubhouse, at the time ranked as one of the most dominant, most lucrative urban political machines in the nation.
The secret to Tammany’s success was no secret: favors on a grand scale equal loyalty.
Give me your vote to elect my pals and I will help you.
The organization divided the city down to the door frames of the poorest shanty.
Its ward heelers stood ready, especially eager to help the flood tides of immigrants.
Tammany had started innocently enough in 1789 as a patriotic club with faux Indian rituals; the members were still called “braves,” wore headdresses occasionally, did war chants.
It had grown successful with the waves of immigrants, and had even survived the Boss Tweed scandal of the 1870s.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Throughout September, private clubs were still flouting the excise law and serving members on Sundays.
(Their lawyers argued that clubs were exempt.)
During the summer Roosevelt had announced a crackdown on “rich as well as poor,” but then had uncharacteristically backed off.
Police Chief Conlin waffled and an assistant district attorney lamely announced the impossibility of gaining admittance to gather evidence.
Town Topics advised TR to go undercover at his own Union League.
“He can hang about the clubhouse, hide in the toilet room or the cellar and burst forth like an official cyclone” or he can follow the “modern police policy of inciting the crime.”
The society weekly explained: “He can cordially invite [members] to ‘take something’ with him and arrest them if they accept.”
The Democratic convention took place September 25 in Syracuse.
Unlike the Republicans the Democrats spotlighted Sunday laws.
After giving a respectful nod to “honest enforcement of the law” and to “orderly Sundays,” the Democrats shrewdly endorsed a “local option” solution, that is, a vote by individual cities to determine their own Sunday excise laws.
“Shrewdly” because Democrats did not control either the New York State Assembly or Senate, and even if by some far-fetched miracle they gained narrow control of both houses, they would never have enough votes to override the veto of a Republican governor.
Nonetheless, despite its dismal prospects, “Local Option” delivered a better rallying cry for the Democrats than “Drink Up and Violate the Law!”
The pundits touted Tammany as poised for a comeback.
That prospect deeply infuriated Roosevelt.
He repeatedly confided to Lodge that he expected to be blamed for the defeat.
The irony galled Roosevelt.
He was running a strict law-and-order Police Board as an antidote to decades of corrupt city politics and now his stern enforcement might bring the most corrupt hustlers of Tammany back to power.
Tammany Hall, the local Democratic clubhouse, at the time ranked as one of the most dominant, most lucrative urban political machines in the nation.
The secret to Tammany’s success was no secret: favors on a grand scale equal loyalty.
Give me your vote to elect my pals and I will help you.
The organization divided the city down to the door frames of the poorest shanty.
Its ward heelers stood ready, especially eager to help the flood tides of immigrants.
Tammany had started innocently enough in 1789 as a patriotic club with faux Indian rituals; the members were still called “braves,” wore headdresses occasionally, did war chants.
It had grown successful with the waves of immigrants, and had even survived the Boss Tweed scandal of the 1870s.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Overweight, shaped like a pear on toothpicks, bald-headed, Tweed ranks as the most famous politician ever felled by a cartoonist.
Thomas Nast’s wicked caricatures in Harper’s Weekly kept the scandal alive until the New York Times began printing city expense reports in 1871.
The building of the three-floor New York County Court House cost $12 million, which vaguely translates to $240 million in twenty-first-century currency.
One accounting item listed “brooms, etc.” for $41,190.95.
Tweed, a onetime U.S. congressman, had skimmed millions in kickbacks on inflated city contracts.
He also bribed Democratic and Republican state legislators to frame sweetheart deals.
One judge described pending legislation to authorize an additional $10 million in Erie Railroad Stock for Jay Gould and others as “a bill legalizing counterfeit money.”
Tweed’s crimes had horrified New York, or so the newspapers said.
However, within two years, New Yorkers reelected Tammany Hall politicians to top offices when the new boss, “Honest” John Kelly, ran an anti-Tweed campaign for Tammany.
In 1886, Richard “Dick” Croker replaced Kelly.
This boss fell more into the central casting mold of a boss.
Bearded, gorilla-like, he rose from running an East Side tunnel gang.
His fierceness was proven when he was accused of murdering a rival during an Election Day brawl.
After a hung jury, the case was never retried.
(Reformer Carl Schurz wrote: “some old-fashioned people considered [the killing] an objectionable feature of his career.”)
Croker — in the mold of modern Mafia bosses — demanded absolute loyalty.
Over time, he developed an understated but menacing demeanor; he had no interest in food, wine, music, or theater.
He generally preferred the company of horses and dogs, this “mild-mannered, soft-voiced, sad-faced, green-eyed chunk of a man,” as one magazine writer put it.
Croker, who grew up in a shanty, had amassed at least $3 million by 1894, and owned a magnificent home amid the swells at 5 East 74th Street, built of Meadow Grey Stone with a window looking out to Central Park.
For this upcoming election, Croker had returned from his racing stables in Ireland (and self-imposed exile during Lexow) to run Tammany Hall.
He welcomed the rise of Roosevelt and the shuttered saloons as an opportunity.
In forty-one days, New Yorkers would decide whether to reembrace Tammany Hall and Croker.
Roosevelt — ever the knight-errant — saw it as a battle of good versus evil, of law enforcement versus crime.
“I do not think we have impaired our chances of victory in the least,” he wrote to Lodge, angling for a more upbeat tone.
“There was risk either way; and only one way leads toward honesty.”
On the same afternoon as the Democratic convention, a workaday Wednesday, September 25, the thirsty Germans of New York City engineered an extraordinary tribute to beer and liberty.
More than 30,000 marchers, most native Germans or German Americans, almost all carrying small American flags, joyfully paraded up Lexington Avenue, along with musical bands, glee clubs, costumed bicyclists, and horse-drawn floats.
“What a jolly saucy procession it was, to be sure!” assessed the New York Recorder.
“How it flaunted the foaming glass or amber colored bottle in the face of the spectators!"
"How it waved the American flag and yelled for liberty, personal liberty — the liberty to buy one’s beer on Sundays and to drink it at one’s pleasure!”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Overweight, shaped like a pear on toothpicks, bald-headed, Tweed ranks as the most famous politician ever felled by a cartoonist.
Thomas Nast’s wicked caricatures in Harper’s Weekly kept the scandal alive until the New York Times began printing city expense reports in 1871.
The building of the three-floor New York County Court House cost $12 million, which vaguely translates to $240 million in twenty-first-century currency.
One accounting item listed “brooms, etc.” for $41,190.95.
Tweed, a onetime U.S. congressman, had skimmed millions in kickbacks on inflated city contracts.
He also bribed Democratic and Republican state legislators to frame sweetheart deals.
One judge described pending legislation to authorize an additional $10 million in Erie Railroad Stock for Jay Gould and others as “a bill legalizing counterfeit money.”
Tweed’s crimes had horrified New York, or so the newspapers said.
However, within two years, New Yorkers reelected Tammany Hall politicians to top offices when the new boss, “Honest” John Kelly, ran an anti-Tweed campaign for Tammany.
In 1886, Richard “Dick” Croker replaced Kelly.
This boss fell more into the central casting mold of a boss.
Bearded, gorilla-like, he rose from running an East Side tunnel gang.
His fierceness was proven when he was accused of murdering a rival during an Election Day brawl.
After a hung jury, the case was never retried.
(Reformer Carl Schurz wrote: “some old-fashioned people considered [the killing] an objectionable feature of his career.”)
Croker — in the mold of modern Mafia bosses — demanded absolute loyalty.
Over time, he developed an understated but menacing demeanor; he had no interest in food, wine, music, or theater.
He generally preferred the company of horses and dogs, this “mild-mannered, soft-voiced, sad-faced, green-eyed chunk of a man,” as one magazine writer put it.
Croker, who grew up in a shanty, had amassed at least $3 million by 1894, and owned a magnificent home amid the swells at 5 East 74th Street, built of Meadow Grey Stone with a window looking out to Central Park.
For this upcoming election, Croker had returned from his racing stables in Ireland (and self-imposed exile during Lexow) to run Tammany Hall.
He welcomed the rise of Roosevelt and the shuttered saloons as an opportunity.
In forty-one days, New Yorkers would decide whether to reembrace Tammany Hall and Croker.
Roosevelt — ever the knight-errant — saw it as a battle of good versus evil, of law enforcement versus crime.
“I do not think we have impaired our chances of victory in the least,” he wrote to Lodge, angling for a more upbeat tone.
“There was risk either way; and only one way leads toward honesty.”
On the same afternoon as the Democratic convention, a workaday Wednesday, September 25, the thirsty Germans of New York City engineered an extraordinary tribute to beer and liberty.
More than 30,000 marchers, most native Germans or German Americans, almost all carrying small American flags, joyfully paraded up Lexington Avenue, along with musical bands, glee clubs, costumed bicyclists, and horse-drawn floats.
“What a jolly saucy procession it was, to be sure!” assessed the New York Recorder.
“How it flaunted the foaming glass or amber colored bottle in the face of the spectators!"
"How it waved the American flag and yelled for liberty, personal liberty — the liberty to buy one’s beer on Sundays and to drink it at one’s pleasure!”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
The Agitation Committee of the United Societies for Liberal Sunday Laws had sent police commissioner Roosevelt an invitation but probably more as a taunt or a joke.
Though relentlessly demonized in the city’s German-language newspapers, Roosevelt decided to take Carl Schurz’s advice and attend.
Accompanied by roundsman Michael Tierney, the commissioner reached the reviewing stand at 86th Street at about 3 p.m., well ahead of the paraders.
TR was escorted to a place of honor, front row center.
The parade arrived around 3:20 p.m. and gradually word spread among the marchers that Roosevelt was there.
He never stopped smiling and waving.
When a parader lifted a glass or bottle to him, he shouted back, “Prosit!”
(There was no “open container” law in that era.)
When one uniformed veteran of the Franco-Prussian War hollered in a booming voice: “Wo ist der Roosevelt? Ich würde ihn sehen,” he leaned forward in the reviewing stand and shouted back, “Hier bin ich.”
The crowd erupted in cheers.
Roosevelt had spent five months in Dresden at age fourteen.
The passing paraders by the hundreds reacted to TR.
Many smiled; some cheered (they might have thought his attendance meant a sudden endorsement of their cause).
Roosevelt, who doffed his hat and kept a perpetual smile on his face, was the center of attention in a reviewing stand of Teutonic elite.
Interspersed amid the marchers were horse-drawn floats, such as Lady Liberty in mourning.
A beautiful young woman, in a red-white-and-blue dress, wore a floor-length black veil.
But even she couldn’t resist nudging the veil aside and peeking out and smiling at Roosevelt.
Another float, a simple horse-drawn delivery truck with a large banner, WORKINGMAN’S SUNDAY, showed three men — in blue overalls and colored shirts — inside a simple wooden cage, sadly passing around an empty “growler” (a bucket for carrying beer home from the saloon).
Every attempt to gulp some beer ended in a miffed discovery of emptiness.
The highlight of the floats, the biggest crowd pleaser, was the Millionaires’ Club.
Four men in elegant black suits, with red silk handkerchiefs “and other signs of swelldom ... sat around a marble topped table and quaffed champagne between puffs at large fat cigars.”
One of them seemed a dead ringer for Roosevelt.
At the other end of the float, a policeman was arresting a bartender who was just then filling two beers for a couple of dockworkers.
The rich drink; the poor suffer.
The commissioner smiled relentlessly, even at this float, calling it the “best of al lfloats ... an excellent conceit.”
Near the end of the parade, a man came by the reviewing stand and waggled his banner — ROOSEVELT’S RAZZLE-DAZZLE REFORM RACKET — within a foot of TR’s face, drawing a big laugh.
TR suddenly asked the man if he could have the flag, and the fellow somewhat sheepishly agreed.
Roundsman Tierney jumped down and broke the long handle off and rolled up the banner.
A little while later, TR saw SEND THE POLICE CZAR TO RUSSIA and asked for that one too.
“Tie those up, Tierney, and I will take those away with me as souvenirs.”
Roosevelt had warned the organizers that he would have to leave in time to catch the 4:45 p.m. train to Oyster Bay.
“Good bye, it’s been great fun,” he told his hosts, rushing off to the 34th Street ferry to Long Island City.
“I never had a better time in my life ..."
"I’m glad I saw it but a hundred parades wouldn’t swerve me from my duty in enforcing the law.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The Agitation Committee of the United Societies for Liberal Sunday Laws had sent police commissioner Roosevelt an invitation but probably more as a taunt or a joke.
Though relentlessly demonized in the city’s German-language newspapers, Roosevelt decided to take Carl Schurz’s advice and attend.
Accompanied by roundsman Michael Tierney, the commissioner reached the reviewing stand at 86th Street at about 3 p.m., well ahead of the paraders.
TR was escorted to a place of honor, front row center.
The parade arrived around 3:20 p.m. and gradually word spread among the marchers that Roosevelt was there.
He never stopped smiling and waving.
When a parader lifted a glass or bottle to him, he shouted back, “Prosit!”
(There was no “open container” law in that era.)
When one uniformed veteran of the Franco-Prussian War hollered in a booming voice: “Wo ist der Roosevelt? Ich würde ihn sehen,” he leaned forward in the reviewing stand and shouted back, “Hier bin ich.”
The crowd erupted in cheers.
Roosevelt had spent five months in Dresden at age fourteen.
The passing paraders by the hundreds reacted to TR.
Many smiled; some cheered (they might have thought his attendance meant a sudden endorsement of their cause).
Roosevelt, who doffed his hat and kept a perpetual smile on his face, was the center of attention in a reviewing stand of Teutonic elite.
Interspersed amid the marchers were horse-drawn floats, such as Lady Liberty in mourning.
A beautiful young woman, in a red-white-and-blue dress, wore a floor-length black veil.
But even she couldn’t resist nudging the veil aside and peeking out and smiling at Roosevelt.
Another float, a simple horse-drawn delivery truck with a large banner, WORKINGMAN’S SUNDAY, showed three men — in blue overalls and colored shirts — inside a simple wooden cage, sadly passing around an empty “growler” (a bucket for carrying beer home from the saloon).
Every attempt to gulp some beer ended in a miffed discovery of emptiness.
The highlight of the floats, the biggest crowd pleaser, was the Millionaires’ Club.
Four men in elegant black suits, with red silk handkerchiefs “and other signs of swelldom ... sat around a marble topped table and quaffed champagne between puffs at large fat cigars.”
One of them seemed a dead ringer for Roosevelt.
At the other end of the float, a policeman was arresting a bartender who was just then filling two beers for a couple of dockworkers.
The rich drink; the poor suffer.
The commissioner smiled relentlessly, even at this float, calling it the “best of al lfloats ... an excellent conceit.”
Near the end of the parade, a man came by the reviewing stand and waggled his banner — ROOSEVELT’S RAZZLE-DAZZLE REFORM RACKET — within a foot of TR’s face, drawing a big laugh.
TR suddenly asked the man if he could have the flag, and the fellow somewhat sheepishly agreed.
Roundsman Tierney jumped down and broke the long handle off and rolled up the banner.
A little while later, TR saw SEND THE POLICE CZAR TO RUSSIA and asked for that one too.
“Tie those up, Tierney, and I will take those away with me as souvenirs.”
Roosevelt had warned the organizers that he would have to leave in time to catch the 4:45 p.m. train to Oyster Bay.
“Good bye, it’s been great fun,” he told his hosts, rushing off to the 34th Street ferry to Long Island City.
“I never had a better time in my life ..."
"I’m glad I saw it but a hundred parades wouldn’t swerve me from my duty in enforcing the law.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
He apparently loudly repeated that last line to several of the dignitaries within earshot of several newspapermen.
With his infectious grin, Roosevelt had charmed some of the German marchers and dignitaries and most of the reporters, who liked the “Daniel in the lion’s den” angle, but the real proof would be in the election results.
The local Republican Party was taking no chances.
The top men were convinced of Roosevelt’s unpopularity.
So, “Smooth Ed” Lauterbach, the Republican leader in New York City, with Platt’s blessing, decreed that no Republican organization, from the smallest club upward, should invite Roosevelt to speak in any of the campaigns ... not for judges, assemblymen, state senators, county clerk, secretary of state, not anything.
Roosevelt would thereby be banned from all the massive rallies as well.
Lauterbach also issued an unequivocal statement that the “Republican party was not in any way responsible for Rooseveltism.”
While the city Republicans tried to cast off Roosevelt, they embraced that retired policeman and poster boy for graft and excessive force, Alexander “Clubber” Williams.
Piling up the irony, the Republicans, who had championed the Lexow Committee, which had exposed Williams’s misdeeds and ill-gotten wealth, were now touting him for state senator in the Twelfth District.
With great difficulty, Roosevelt muzzled himself regarding Williams, struggling to honor his vow to Cabot not to criticize the Republican Party.
“Smooth Ed” Lauterbach was a worthy adversary for TR.
Born poor on the Bowery, he had risen as a corporate lawyer; he was especially refined in his tastes in the arts, fluent in French and German.
His wife often hosted musical soirees at their elegant home at 2 East 78th Street.
Clever, witty, five feet six, with a pointed black beard, he was portrayed by cartoonists as a glad-handing Mephistopheles.
Roosevelt was deeply irritated by Lauterbach’s renunciation of so-called Rooseveltism and planned on lashing out against him, at least after the election.
(Lodge would later frantically try to talk him out of it. “Mr. Lauterbach looks important in N.Y. City — he is pretty small in the State and absolutely unknown outside of it. You are known all over the country and known as a Republican. What Mr. Lauterbach says is of no consequence. What you say and do is of vast consequence.”)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
He apparently loudly repeated that last line to several of the dignitaries within earshot of several newspapermen.
With his infectious grin, Roosevelt had charmed some of the German marchers and dignitaries and most of the reporters, who liked the “Daniel in the lion’s den” angle, but the real proof would be in the election results.
The local Republican Party was taking no chances.
The top men were convinced of Roosevelt’s unpopularity.
So, “Smooth Ed” Lauterbach, the Republican leader in New York City, with Platt’s blessing, decreed that no Republican organization, from the smallest club upward, should invite Roosevelt to speak in any of the campaigns ... not for judges, assemblymen, state senators, county clerk, secretary of state, not anything.
Roosevelt would thereby be banned from all the massive rallies as well.
Lauterbach also issued an unequivocal statement that the “Republican party was not in any way responsible for Rooseveltism.”
While the city Republicans tried to cast off Roosevelt, they embraced that retired policeman and poster boy for graft and excessive force, Alexander “Clubber” Williams.
Piling up the irony, the Republicans, who had championed the Lexow Committee, which had exposed Williams’s misdeeds and ill-gotten wealth, were now touting him for state senator in the Twelfth District.
With great difficulty, Roosevelt muzzled himself regarding Williams, struggling to honor his vow to Cabot not to criticize the Republican Party.
“Smooth Ed” Lauterbach was a worthy adversary for TR.
Born poor on the Bowery, he had risen as a corporate lawyer; he was especially refined in his tastes in the arts, fluent in French and German.
His wife often hosted musical soirees at their elegant home at 2 East 78th Street.
Clever, witty, five feet six, with a pointed black beard, he was portrayed by cartoonists as a glad-handing Mephistopheles.
Roosevelt was deeply irritated by Lauterbach’s renunciation of so-called Rooseveltism and planned on lashing out against him, at least after the election.
(Lodge would later frantically try to talk him out of it. “Mr. Lauterbach looks important in N.Y. City — he is pretty small in the State and absolutely unknown outside of it. You are known all over the country and known as a Republican. What Mr. Lauterbach says is of no consequence. What you say and do is of vast consequence.”)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Never one to back down, Roosevelt refused to disappear, as the Republican machine so clearly desired, but instead accepted dozens of invitations from a ragtag collection of church, temperance, and reform groups, speaking sometimes two or three times a night.
He even spoke at a Harlem Democratic club.
Up in Boston, the Massachusetts Republicans allowed him to speak.
His own party in New York was cold-shouldering him, in the hopes of winning the city.
In late September, Reverend Parkhurst returned refreshed from two months in the Swiss Alps.
He found the Republicans and Good Government groups and independent Democrats all at loggerheads, each making noises about fielding its own slate of candidates.
With Sunday shutdowns and Roosevelt in the picture, Parkhurst would need to practice some rare political alchemy to create a Fusion ticket, blending all the anti-Tammany forces.
Roosevelt analyzed the problem for Lodge.
“The cowardice and rascality of the machine Republicans; and the flaming idiocy of the ‘better element’ have been comic and also disheartening,” he wrote.
“The Republican Machine men have been loudly demanding a straight [Republican] ticket, and those prize idiots, the Goo-Goos, have just played into their hands by capering off and nominating an independent ticket of their own.”
Many reformers belonging to the Good Government clubs (i.e., Goo-Goos) were wealthy and had a reputation for adopting uncompromising stances that guaranteed high-minded defeat at the polls.
Parkhurst approached the Chamber of Commerce and other top-tier citizens to form a Committee of Seventy to broker a broad Fusion campaign.
“A bomb exploding in Tammany Hall would not have caused more consternation among the braves,” proclaimed the New York World on the front page on October 2.
Parkhurst landed fifty wealthy prominent citizens — Gustav Schwab, Charles Stewart Smith, Joseph Choate, Elihu Root, J.P. Morgan — for the committee; they began negotiating with the Republicans and others to form a Fusion ticket.
When compromise talks faltered, Parkhurst issued a statement threatening to run a campaign: “Down with Tammany."
"Down with Platt."
"Death to machine politicians in the city of New York.”
A mini-Fusion ticket finally emerged on October 7.
The Republicans and the anti-Tammany State Democracy Party agreed to band together.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Never one to back down, Roosevelt refused to disappear, as the Republican machine so clearly desired, but instead accepted dozens of invitations from a ragtag collection of church, temperance, and reform groups, speaking sometimes two or three times a night.
He even spoke at a Harlem Democratic club.
Up in Boston, the Massachusetts Republicans allowed him to speak.
His own party in New York was cold-shouldering him, in the hopes of winning the city.
In late September, Reverend Parkhurst returned refreshed from two months in the Swiss Alps.
He found the Republicans and Good Government groups and independent Democrats all at loggerheads, each making noises about fielding its own slate of candidates.
With Sunday shutdowns and Roosevelt in the picture, Parkhurst would need to practice some rare political alchemy to create a Fusion ticket, blending all the anti-Tammany forces.
Roosevelt analyzed the problem for Lodge.
“The cowardice and rascality of the machine Republicans; and the flaming idiocy of the ‘better element’ have been comic and also disheartening,” he wrote.
“The Republican Machine men have been loudly demanding a straight [Republican] ticket, and those prize idiots, the Goo-Goos, have just played into their hands by capering off and nominating an independent ticket of their own.”
Many reformers belonging to the Good Government clubs (i.e., Goo-Goos) were wealthy and had a reputation for adopting uncompromising stances that guaranteed high-minded defeat at the polls.
Parkhurst approached the Chamber of Commerce and other top-tier citizens to form a Committee of Seventy to broker a broad Fusion campaign.
“A bomb exploding in Tammany Hall would not have caused more consternation among the braves,” proclaimed the New York World on the front page on October 2.
Parkhurst landed fifty wealthy prominent citizens — Gustav Schwab, Charles Stewart Smith, Joseph Choate, Elihu Root, J.P. Morgan — for the committee; they began negotiating with the Republicans and others to form a Fusion ticket.
When compromise talks faltered, Parkhurst issued a statement threatening to run a campaign: “Down with Tammany."
"Down with Platt."
"Death to machine politicians in the city of New York.”
A mini-Fusion ticket finally emerged on October 7.
The Republicans and the anti-Tammany State Democracy Party agreed to band together.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Needing the skill of a circus contortionist, they tried to concoct an excise plank to satisfy all constituents, especially the Germans.
The platform began ambivalently enough: “We insist that every citizen is entitled ... to enjoy the largest measure of personal freedom, consistent with the welfare of the community, and not in conflict with the moral and religious convictions of his fellow citizens.”
The three-paragraph plank had enough “on the one hand, on the other hand”s for an eight-handed Lord Shiva.
It culminated with an endorsement of the “local option,” but it also included a Republican plank encouraging the Republican legislature and governor to promptly revise the excise law, without specifying the revisions.
Now came the crucial tests: Would the Germans join the mini-Fusion ticket?
Would the Goo-Goos switch course and join mini-Fusion?
Would the GARUs (members of the German American Reform Union) and the influential Staats-Zeitung newspaper back the cause?
On October 8, the Goo-Goos’ meeting at the United Charities Building voted down Fusion, 63 to 47.
The GARUs met at Maennerchor Hall, 56th Street and Third Avenue, and voted by a shockingly large majority to endorse ... Tammany Hall.
“I’m no Tammany man,” said Herman Ridder of the Staats-Zeitung.
“I never voted for Tammany in my life."
"But I will and we all will this time, so that there may be no more blue laws.”
Key community leader Oswald Ottendorfer said he hoped the election of Tammany would send a strong message to the Republicans and Commissioner Roosevelt.
However, a faction of reform-minded German GARUs couldn’t squeeze their nostrils tight enough to embrace Tammany; so the splintering continued further as Carl Schurz helped organize the German-American Citizens’ Union, dubbed the GAZOOs.
The situation was hopelessly, ridiculously muddled.
Although Roosevelt soldiered on with his combative style and big smiles, he was chafing more and more privately.
“The attitude of the Germans has caused a regular panic among our people, from Platt to Strong [to] run away from the issue.”
He added: “It is almost comic to see the shifts of our State and City party managers in keeping me off the platform.”
Roosevelt was feeling increasingly isolated.
“I can’t help writing you,” he wrote to Lodge on October 11, “for I literally have no one here to whom to unburden myself; I make acquaintances very easily but there are only one or two people in the world, outside of my own family, whom I deem friends or for whom I really care.”
The newspapers didn’t tire of blaming Roosevelt for the fractured election that would probably boost Tammany.
Roosevelt was truly banned by his own party.
On October 15, the Republicans held a massive rally at Cooper Union, a sprawling building at 7th Street and Broadway.
Some State Democrats and GAZOOs joined the Republicans on the platform.
The festive well-dressed crowd of several thousand, including only a handful of women, cheered on Republican causes.
Then the keynote speaker, Warner Miller of Herkimer, New York, blindsided his New York City hosts.
He hammered home with absolute clarity that the Republican Party wanted the “saloons to be closed on Sundays.”
(He had turned down the local party’s request to “blue-pencil” his speech; he in effect defied Lauterbach and Platt.)
Ample-bellied, mustachioed, dead earnest, Miller said Sunday excise had grown into the biggest issue in New York State.
“The Republican Party had to meet it or run away like cowards,” he stated.
Someone on the platform shouted: “You’re no coward!”
Miller praised the police commissioners for their successful efforts and opined that the State of New York supported them.
The comment drew pockets of passionate clapping, scattershot hisses, a low rumble of tepid applause.
The reaction was decidedly mixed.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Needing the skill of a circus contortionist, they tried to concoct an excise plank to satisfy all constituents, especially the Germans.
The platform began ambivalently enough: “We insist that every citizen is entitled ... to enjoy the largest measure of personal freedom, consistent with the welfare of the community, and not in conflict with the moral and religious convictions of his fellow citizens.”
The three-paragraph plank had enough “on the one hand, on the other hand”s for an eight-handed Lord Shiva.
It culminated with an endorsement of the “local option,” but it also included a Republican plank encouraging the Republican legislature and governor to promptly revise the excise law, without specifying the revisions.
Now came the crucial tests: Would the Germans join the mini-Fusion ticket?
Would the Goo-Goos switch course and join mini-Fusion?
Would the GARUs (members of the German American Reform Union) and the influential Staats-Zeitung newspaper back the cause?
On October 8, the Goo-Goos’ meeting at the United Charities Building voted down Fusion, 63 to 47.
The GARUs met at Maennerchor Hall, 56th Street and Third Avenue, and voted by a shockingly large majority to endorse ... Tammany Hall.
“I’m no Tammany man,” said Herman Ridder of the Staats-Zeitung.
“I never voted for Tammany in my life."
"But I will and we all will this time, so that there may be no more blue laws.”
Key community leader Oswald Ottendorfer said he hoped the election of Tammany would send a strong message to the Republicans and Commissioner Roosevelt.
However, a faction of reform-minded German GARUs couldn’t squeeze their nostrils tight enough to embrace Tammany; so the splintering continued further as Carl Schurz helped organize the German-American Citizens’ Union, dubbed the GAZOOs.
The situation was hopelessly, ridiculously muddled.
Although Roosevelt soldiered on with his combative style and big smiles, he was chafing more and more privately.
“The attitude of the Germans has caused a regular panic among our people, from Platt to Strong [to] run away from the issue.”
He added: “It is almost comic to see the shifts of our State and City party managers in keeping me off the platform.”
Roosevelt was feeling increasingly isolated.
“I can’t help writing you,” he wrote to Lodge on October 11, “for I literally have no one here to whom to unburden myself; I make acquaintances very easily but there are only one or two people in the world, outside of my own family, whom I deem friends or for whom I really care.”
The newspapers didn’t tire of blaming Roosevelt for the fractured election that would probably boost Tammany.
Roosevelt was truly banned by his own party.
On October 15, the Republicans held a massive rally at Cooper Union, a sprawling building at 7th Street and Broadway.
Some State Democrats and GAZOOs joined the Republicans on the platform.
The festive well-dressed crowd of several thousand, including only a handful of women, cheered on Republican causes.
Then the keynote speaker, Warner Miller of Herkimer, New York, blindsided his New York City hosts.
He hammered home with absolute clarity that the Republican Party wanted the “saloons to be closed on Sundays.”
(He had turned down the local party’s request to “blue-pencil” his speech; he in effect defied Lauterbach and Platt.)
Ample-bellied, mustachioed, dead earnest, Miller said Sunday excise had grown into the biggest issue in New York State.
“The Republican Party had to meet it or run away like cowards,” he stated.
Someone on the platform shouted: “You’re no coward!”
Miller praised the police commissioners for their successful efforts and opined that the State of New York supported them.
The comment drew pockets of passionate clapping, scattershot hisses, a low rumble of tepid applause.
The reaction was decidedly mixed.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Miller, occasionally pounding his right hand down on the lectern, informed the crowd that a citizen’s personal liberty should hold little weight in “great moral questions” such as observing the Sabbath.
Voters should never receive a “local option” vote for the “Sunday saloon,” or for “gambling” or the “social evil” or for “every crime that breaks the Decalogue.”
The audience was warming to his theme.
He played once again on xenophobia.
“We welcome every good immigrant to our shores, but we are a mature people, with fixed habits and customs, to which those who come here are expected to conform."
"They come here to escape the tyrannies of monarchial governments."
"We claim that as an American government we must ask all who come here to become Americans and be Americanized.”
The crowd erupted in its first foot-stomping all-out cheers of the night.
He called the saloon “the rendezvous of every evil element of the community” and said that having it open six days a week was enough.
He even wondered aloud whether the Germans who joined Tammany might not be anarchists or socialists.
By the event’s end at 11 p.m., half of the mostly Republican crowd had drifted out; the other half surged forward to congratulate Warner Miller on his speech.
Under a headline SUNDAY BEER FOR NONE, the New York Times stressed that Miller had championed the very points that the local Fusion ticket was trying to avoid, so as to woo the Germans.
“Not only was [Miller] not ‘bottled up’ but he fairly spouted coldwater,” commented the paper with uncharacteristic playfulness.
The following day’s Times headline was REPUBLICANS IN GLOOM.
The World ran a front-page cartoon of the Tammany tiger standing with a paw on Roosevelt’s head to get a boost over the wall.
The caption read: “‘I don’t care a rap for the consequences.’—Theodore Roosevelt.”
A few days later, Roosevelt sat down for a long interview with a New York World reporter.
He was asked if a Tammany victory in the election “will be due to the rigid Sunday closing under your administration?”
Roosevelt demurred: “Why, of course, it would not be due to that."
"If the Sunday closing brought about a defeat of the reform party the defeat would be due to those reform politicians and reform newspapers which have departed from the issue and have encouraged the forces of evil by taking the position that one set of law breakers are entitled to immunity at the hands of the police because they are politically powerful."
"If the men who believe in honest government had stood straight up to the issue of honesty in public office we would have won this fall hands down."
"I think we are going to win anyway."
"If we do not, why, all I can say is as I have said before, that I would rather lose on the issue of the honest observance of the law than win at the cost of a corrupt connivance with law breakers.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Miller, occasionally pounding his right hand down on the lectern, informed the crowd that a citizen’s personal liberty should hold little weight in “great moral questions” such as observing the Sabbath.
Voters should never receive a “local option” vote for the “Sunday saloon,” or for “gambling” or the “social evil” or for “every crime that breaks the Decalogue.”
The audience was warming to his theme.
He played once again on xenophobia.
“We welcome every good immigrant to our shores, but we are a mature people, with fixed habits and customs, to which those who come here are expected to conform."
"They come here to escape the tyrannies of monarchial governments."
"We claim that as an American government we must ask all who come here to become Americans and be Americanized.”
The crowd erupted in its first foot-stomping all-out cheers of the night.
He called the saloon “the rendezvous of every evil element of the community” and said that having it open six days a week was enough.
He even wondered aloud whether the Germans who joined Tammany might not be anarchists or socialists.
By the event’s end at 11 p.m., half of the mostly Republican crowd had drifted out; the other half surged forward to congratulate Warner Miller on his speech.
Under a headline SUNDAY BEER FOR NONE, the New York Times stressed that Miller had championed the very points that the local Fusion ticket was trying to avoid, so as to woo the Germans.
“Not only was [Miller] not ‘bottled up’ but he fairly spouted coldwater,” commented the paper with uncharacteristic playfulness.
The following day’s Times headline was REPUBLICANS IN GLOOM.
The World ran a front-page cartoon of the Tammany tiger standing with a paw on Roosevelt’s head to get a boost over the wall.
The caption read: “‘I don’t care a rap for the consequences.’—Theodore Roosevelt.”
A few days later, Roosevelt sat down for a long interview with a New York World reporter.
He was asked if a Tammany victory in the election “will be due to the rigid Sunday closing under your administration?”
Roosevelt demurred: “Why, of course, it would not be due to that."
"If the Sunday closing brought about a defeat of the reform party the defeat would be due to those reform politicians and reform newspapers which have departed from the issue and have encouraged the forces of evil by taking the position that one set of law breakers are entitled to immunity at the hands of the police because they are politically powerful."
"If the men who believe in honest government had stood straight up to the issue of honesty in public office we would have won this fall hands down."
"I think we are going to win anyway."
"If we do not, why, all I can say is as I have said before, that I would rather lose on the issue of the honest observance of the law than win at the cost of a corrupt connivance with law breakers.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...