Theodore Roosevelt

ice in the state or national government, to keep out of city politics. It is a graveyard for reputati

; the lax and easy-going people who do not care how much rottenness there is about, so that it is kept partly covered up (and this is one

mind quickly and well, he is either helpless, or soon placed in a position where he seems to have been dishonorable. For, of course the first method which a crooked man uses to destroy his honest opponent, is t

1895. Mayor Strong, on a Reform ticket, had beaten Tammany Hall. He wanted an able and energetic man and so sent for Roosevelt. The condition of the Police

police, and they let him go on with his crime. More than that, they saw that no one bothered him. There was a regular scale of prices for things varying all the way from serious crime down to small offenses. It cost more to be a highway r

by taking big ones, and finally he was in partnership with the chief rascals. The hideous system organized by the powerful men in Tammany Hall spread outward and downward, and at last all over the city. Roosevelt did not stop all the crime, of co

men of the country the spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of high character in the most ef

Theodore Roos

done in the New York Police Department to-day: it was not so common before 1895. Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners found one old policeman who had saved twenty-five people from drowning and two or three from burning buildings. They gave him his first promotion. He began to have the Department pay for a policeman's uniform when it was torn in making an arrest or otherwise ruined in the

and some of those in the City, wished to have a law to close the saloons on Sunday. So they passed it. But so few people in the City really wished such a law, so many of them wished to drink on Sunday, that the saloons stayed open, and the saloon-keepers paid bribes to t

low-press surpassed themselves in clamor and mendacity. A favorite assertion was that I was enforcing a 'blue law,' an obsolete law th

biography

lways have done. A judge decided that as drink could be served with meals, a man need only eat one sandwich or a pretzel and he could then drink seve

e work and the slum districts of the city. If he caught policemen off their beat, they were ordered to report at his office in

se who follow politics closely. Now, New York newspapers, with their cartoons, began to make him celebrated everywhere. The fact that when he spoke e

most readable in the world. But we have to pay for it, and we often pay by having the real truth concealed from us in a mass of comedy. Newspapers seize upon a

flourishing a big stick. This continued for years and was taken for truth by a great many people. To this day, this imaginary person is believed in by thousands. And in the meantime, the genuine man, a brave high-minded American, loving his country ardentl