The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-10-08

us found out. The lawbreaker found
it out who predicted scornfully that he
would ''knuckle down to politics the
way they all did, and lived to re-
spect him. though he swore at him, as
the one of them all who was stronger
than pull. The peace-loving citizen
who fastened to police headquarters
with anxious entreaties to use dis
erection" in the enforcement OF I'M
popular laws found it out and
went away with a new and GREATNESS
notion yelling up in him of an ofilcial
sworn duty. That was it; that was
what made the age golden that for the
first time a moral purpose came into
the street In the light of 1T every
thing was transformed.
Not all at once. 1t took us weary
months to understand that the shout
ing about the enforcement of the dead
excise law" was lying treachery or
rank ignorance, one as bad as the
other The excise law was not dead.
1t was never so much alive as under
Tammany, but 1t was enforced only
against those saloon keepers who need
ed discipline. 1t was Tammany club,
uScu " uIlNt lISil liAto eo'iiP "iNii'
and it was used so vigorously that no
less than 5000 arrests were made under
it in the year before Roosevelt made
them all close up Pretty lively corpse,
that! But we understood at last, most
of us, understood that the tap-root of
the police blackmail was there, and
that it had to be pulled up If we were
ever there to get further. We under
stood that we were the victims of our
own shaming, and we grew to be bet
ter citizens for it. The police force be
came an army of heroes-for season.
All the good in it came out; and there
Is a lot of it in the worst of times.
Roosevelt had the true philosophers
stone that turns dross to gold, in his
own sturdy faith in his f@llowman.
Men became good because he thought
them so.
BY which I am not to be understood
as meaning that he just voted them
sood-the police, for inetanoe-and sat
by waiting to see the wings grow. No,
but he helped them sDrout. 1t is long
since l have enjoyed anything so much
as I did those patrol trips of ours on
the ''last tour between midnight and
sunrise which earned for him the name
of Haroun al Roosevelt. l had at last
found one who was willing to get up
when other people slept, including,
too often the police, and see what the
town looked like then. He was more
than willing. laid out the route,
covering ten or a dozen patrol-posts,
and we met at 2 a. m, on the steps of
the Union League club, objects of
suspicion on the part of two or three
attendants and Waterman who
Swallowed US as night providers till we
were out of their bailiwlck. l shall
never forget that first, morning when
we travelled for three hours along First
and Second and Third avenues, from
Forty-second street to Bellevue, and
found of 10 patrolmen just one doing
his work faithfully. Two or three were
chatting on saloon corners, and guyed
the president of the board when he
asked them If that was what they were
there for. One was sitting asleep on a
butter-tub in the middle Of the side
walk, snoring SO that you could hear
him across the street, and was inclined
to be sassy" when aroused and told
to go about his duty.
Mr.. Roosevelt was most energetic
roundsmen and, a fair one to boot. 1t
was that quality which speedily won
him the affection of the force, He
hunted high and low before he gave up
his man giving him every chance. We
had been over one mans beat three
times, searching every nook and Granny
of it. and were reluctantly compelled
xyhan no
boss of an all-night restaurant on
Third avenue came out with a club as
we passed and gave the regulation
signal raps OH the sidewalk. There
was some trouble in his place. Three
times he repeated the signal calling for
the patrolman on the beat before he
turned to Roosevelt, who stood by
with the angry exclamation: Where
in the thunder does that copper sleep?
He orter'd tole me when he Civ up the
barber-shop SOS Teller could find
him."
We didn't find him then but he
found the president of the board later
on when summoned to police head
quarters to explain why he had
changed his sleeping quarters. The
whole force woke up as result of that
nights work, and it kept awake those
two years, for as 1t learned by
experience, Mr.. Roosevelt's spectacles
might come cleaning around the
corner at any hour. He had not been
gone a year before the chief found 1t
necessary to transfer half the force in
an uptown precinct to keep 1t awake.
The firemen complained that fires at
night gained too much Roadway while
the police slept. There was no Roose-
welt to wake them up.
Looking after his patrolmen was not
the only errand that took him abroad
at night AS a police president. Mr..
Roosevelt was a member of the health
board and sometimes it was the tene-
ments we went inspecting when the
tenants slept, He was after facts, and
learned speedily to get them as ne
could. When, as governor he wanted
TO know Just how the factory law was
being executed, he came down from
Albany and spent whole day with me
personally Investigating tenements in
which sweating was carried on. l had
not found a governor before, or police
president either, who would do 1t; but
so he learned exactly what he wanted
I never saw Theodore Roosevelt to
better advantage than when he con-
fronted the labor men at their meeting