The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (106 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
A
T NOON THE FOLLOWING DAY
Roosevelt telephoned Bishop and invited him to lunch. In the latter’s words:
As soon as we were seated at a narrow table he leaned forward, bringing his face close to mine, and with appalling directness said, “Parker came into my office this morning and said, ‘You think Bishop is a friend of yours, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, you know what he said about you last night? He said you had a boy’s mind and it might never be developed.’ ”
Roosevelt’s eye-glasses were within three inches of my face, and his eyes were looking straight into mine. Knowing my man, I did not flinch. “Roosevelt, I did say that. Did he tell you what else I said?” “No, that is what I want to hear.” When I told him, he brought his fist down on the table with a bang, exclaiming, “By George, I knew it!” “There, Roosevelt,” said I, “is your snake in the grass, of which I warned you—the meanest of mean liars, who tells half the truth.”
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If nothing else, this incident served to prove Parker’s duplicity to Roosevelt. He reacted as he always reacted—aggressively—but, as in a nightmare, found that he had no weapon to wield, no target to hit. Parker continued to stay away from Board meetings, and when Roosevelt rescheduled some to suit his convenience, maddeningly stayed away from those too. Meanwhile Chief Conlin ignored the Board’s order to report on Brooks and McCullagh, saying that the Commissioners must resolve their own differences. Roosevelt promptly appealed to the Corporation Counsel for an interpretation of the law, and was told that Parker and Conlin were perfectly
within their rights. They could block every major decision of the board for the rest of the century, if they chose. On 24 March, headlines in the yellow press began to mock Roosevelt’s impotence: “His the Voice of Authority, But Parker’s the Hand that Holds the Rod.”
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C
ONSIDERABLE SPACE
was devoted to analyses of the deadlock at Mulberry Street that spring, and as reporters did their research some interesting facts came to light. It transpired that Parker had begun to amass power in the department from the day he took office. Quietly establishing control over the Detective Bureau
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—the most feared in the world, outside of Scotland Yard—he now enjoyed as much potential influence in the underworld as Chief Byrnes had ever done. Just what use, if any, he intended to make of it remained to be seen. His hold over Chief Conlin was traced back to a bargain struck between them the previous year. Apparently Parker had withheld his vote confirming Conlin
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until that officer was so desperate for permanent rank he had consented to pay the price: a promise of cooperation in any future moves against Roosevelt.
Speculation as to Parker’s long-term motives ranged 360 degrees around the political spectrum. The
Herald
noted that Parker and Conlin were both Democrats, and that in the wake of Counsel’s ruling they had already begun to change the structure of the precincts, with a fine eye for political detail. “Mr. Parker … is calculating the possibilities and probabilities of future elections and future Legislatures … Should there ever be a one-headed Commission, and the Democrats in the ascendancy, his friends say, he may be that Commissioner.”
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The
Evening Sun
believed that on the contrary Parker was cooperating with Boss Platt, who, unable to kill Roosevelt with legislation, had crossed party lines in order to cripple him. Parker’s reward, presumably, would be some plum job when Greater New York came into being. Other papers speculated that Parker was working for Boss Jimmy O’Brien of the County Democracy, or, alternatively, Boss Richard Croker of Tammany Hall. But Lincoln Steffens, writing in the
Evening Post
, saw the
whole thing as a simple clash of personalities. “It is impossible that two men like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Parker should long travel the same road. They run on radically divergent tracks. Mr. Parker fights secretively, by choice, while Roosevelt seeks the open … Parker rushes swiftly to the punishment of any man. Roosevelt seeks ever a chance to reward and praise. Both are able and obstinate men … They were foreordained to disagree, and they did … It is idle to say that there is even a semblance of peace in Mulberry Street. There is war and nothing but war in prospect.”
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R
OOSEVELT WOULD HAVE WELCOMED
a war of any sort during those early months of 1896. His preference, he confessed to Bamie, ran to the foreign variety.
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The nation was caught up in great excitement over President Cleveland’s Venezuela Message, and pressures were mounting for Congress to recognize the rebellion in Cuba. Roosevelt vigorously championed both causes. He sent a letter of congratulation to the President, and received a long, grateful response. Cleveland, however, seemed unwilling to venture into the Caribbean, much to Roosevelt’s disgust. “We ought to drive the Spaniards out of Cuba … it would be a good thing, in more ways than one, to do it.”
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His frustrations over the Police Board deadlock vented themselves in a series of speeches, articles, and open letters aimed at “the peace-at-any-price men,” or, more specifically, “beings whose cult is non-virility.”
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The editors of the
Harvard Crimson
were assailed for their “spirit of eager servility toward England,” and sternly reminded that John Quincy Adams, the real formulator of the Monroe Doctrine, had been a Harvard man. Students at the University of Chicago were warned that the adult world was “rough and bloody … but if you have enough of the lust of battle in you, you will have a pretty good time after all.” Elsewhere in the Windy City, in a major address to mark Washington’s birthday, he thundered his gospel, “Life is strife,” against a backdrop of Stars and Stripes. “There is an unhappy tendency among certain of our cultivated people,” Roosevelt went on, “to lose the great manly virtues, the
power to strive and fight and conquer.” He urged his audience, in the name of Washington, to be ready for the day when America had to uphold its honor “by an appeal to the supreme arbitrament of the sword.”
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The nonvirile, in reply, made amused reference to his failure to conquer anyone at Police Headquarters. “When a man of marked ability is obviously uncomfortable where he is,” wrote a correspondent of the
Evening Post
, “it is a satisfaction to find some place where his energies will have unchecked swing.” The writer suggested that Roosevelt should leave immediately for South Africa, where the Boers—“Dutchmen pure and simple”—were fighting a losing battle for control of the Transvaal. “Let him shake from his feet the dust of ungrateful Manhattan … let him offer himself as General-in-Chief to President Kruger, and head the staunch conservatives who hold the fort from the Vaal to the Limpopo; perhaps he may succeed in rolling back the British aggressor.”
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E. L. Godkin, editor of the
Post
, agreed that this was an excellent idea. “Speaking for the American public, we say that, much as we esteem Mr. Roosevelt as a Police Commissioner we think his value to the community would be greatly increased if somehow he could somewhere have his fill of fighting.” After two or three campaigns for Kruger, he would be purged, and would be able to resume the life of a dedicated public servant. In barbed sentences that seem to have embedded themselves in Roosevelt’s hide, Godkin went on:
Now, in our opinion, no man—and especially no man of Mr. Roosevelt’s bellicose temperament—is qualified to give advice about war who has not seen war … The sight of a battlefield is one of the most awful lessons in international ethics which a civilized man can receive … Before Mr. Roosevelt sends round the fiery cross among the young men of the country any more, he ought, therefore, to have some personal experience of his own nostrum. Fighting grizzly bears, we can tell him, is child’s play compared to facing a battery, or storming a fortification … That he would fight like a demon under Kruger, we have no doubt, but he ought
to fight somewhere before he recommends fighting so glibly to our youth.
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R
OOSEVELT ADMITTED TO
hours of deep depression in his job, together with much nervous fatigue as he struggled to break the deadlock at Mulberry Street. “What can I have done? What can I have done? That any man should imagine I could succumb to this hell-born lure?” Commissioners Grant and Andrews were also anxious to promote the two acting inspectors, but Parker continued to object, and Chief Conlin continued to side with him. The deadlock began to look like permanent paralysis. There was no hope of getting remedial legislation through Boss Platt. Grant went to beg his aid, and was politely refused. “I would like to please you, Colonel Grant, but I don’t care nearly as much to please you as I do to worry Roosevelt.”
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The old man was obviously looking forward to Roosevelt’s early resignation. Grant angrily declared that he would vote for no further promotions until Brooks and McCullagh were confirmed. This only worsened the strain on the president of the Board. “Though I have the constitution of a bull moose,” he wrote on 30 March, “it is beginning to wear on me a little.”
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Later that same day he, Grant, and Andrews made a sudden move to bypass Boss Platt. They jointly petitioned the New York State Legislature to scrap the Bipartisan Act. In its place, the Commissioners proposed a bill that would first, enable a majority of three to override a minority of two, and, second, restore to the Board the independent rights of assignment now enjoyed by Chief Conlin. Roosevelt still had plenty of contacts in Albany, and the new Police Bill came up for consideration within forty-eight hours. Machine Republicans were too slow to organize against it, and a favorable vote was recorded in the Assembly.
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Parker moved at once to work up opposition in the Senate. He wrote to warn Boss Platt that Roosevelt was an incorrigible promoter of Democratic policemen. To give the president of the Police Board more power, therefore, would actually reduce Platt’s chances of patronage in the upper ranks. Parker went on to say that he himself was just the opposite: a Democratic Commissioner who
happened to recommend Republican officers. In proof of this statement he enclosed a list of recent promotions, showing that Roosevelt had favored every Democratic candidate to date.
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The list was forwarded to Albany, and Platt’s faithful lieutenant, “Smooth Ed” Lauterbach, circulated it among Republican members of the Senate. Roosevelt did not see a copy until 9 April, when he arrived to testify on behalf of his bill before the Senate Committee on Cities. He boggled at the neatly typed document: it was “unqualifiedly false” in almost every particular. Worse still was Parker’s insinuation that politics played a part in the advancement process at Mulberry Street. Roosevelt neither knew nor cared which party any policeman he liked belonged to; he conceived of promotion strictly in terms of merit.
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