WEBVTT - TR vs. Corruption 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:05.760 History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:11.080 Mental Flaws. It's two am on a cool and rainy 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:15.720 night in June. Two men in dark coats are loitering 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.720 on Second Avenue in New York City, observing a police 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.320 officer across the street. The officer is sitting on an 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.560 upturned butter tub, asleep and snoring so loudly that the 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.920 two men can hear him clearly above the rain. Finally, 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.360 one of the men steps off the curb, crosses the 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.440 street and rouses the officer, who tells a stranger to 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:42.040 get lost. Bad move. He just gave lip to Theodore Roosevelt, 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:44.640 the head of the city's four man police Commission, and 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.040 his boss, who is in disguise wandering the streets on 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.320 what he calls a midnight ramble. He wants to make 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.360 sure that his officers are actually working. He finds, however, 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.600 that they are not. Versions of that same scene would occur, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.000 in the words of photojournalists Gabrice Tira's friend and companion, 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:04.760 that night, for three hours along First and Second and 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:08.560 Third Avenues from Fort Street to Bellevue, police would be 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.040 standing on street corners outside saloons, chatting or sleeping or 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.959 otherwise not doing their jobs, all of them with sas Roosevelt, 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.720 and all would later regret it. A local newspaper reports 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.840 that Roosevelt gives the delinquent officers a raking down which 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.080 they will not soon forget. Later, he crows to his sister, baby, 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:30.120 these midnight rambles are great fun. He begins going on 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.959 the rambles nearly every Thursday night, sometimes with Reese, sometimes 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.560 with reporters. Once he busts an on duty officer as 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.800 he's slurping oysters in a restaurant, the officer tells Roosevelt 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.720 to kick Rocks Tier Dumots in the next day. It's 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:48.160 just one more chapter in his quest to reform the 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.800 police department. As his friend Jacob Brice would say, there's 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.480 very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads from the bars 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.680 of the Bowery to the halls of power in Washington. 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.000 Tier made a career out of taking on eruption, and 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.600 we're about to find out how. From Mental Floss and 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.600 I Heart Radio, this is History Versus, a podcast about 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.720 how your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.040 I'm your host Aeron McCarthy, and Today We're pitting tr 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:19.560 against profiteering politicians, treacherous trusts, and fraudulent food. This episode 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:25.520 is tier versus corruption. Nineteen century American politics were defined 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.040 by the spoils system. Party bosses maintained power by handing 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:33.240 out favors like jobs or government contracts to supporters. In 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.320 New York City, Tammany Hall was the biggest distributor of spoils, 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:41.280 but the system extended to Washington. To Theodore Roosevelt hated it. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.840 He wrote, no republic can permanently endure when it's politics 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:51.359 are corrupt and base, and the spoils system the application 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.800 and political life of the degrading doctrine that to the 0:02:54.880 --> 0:03:00.400 victor belonged the spoils produces corruption and degradation. And incident 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.480 involving his father may have been the reason behind trs feeling. 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.799 In eighteen seventy seven, when tr was nineteen, President Rutherford B. 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.880 Hayes nominated Theodore Senior, or the as collector of customs 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:14.840 in New York. The assumed it was a reward for 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:19.079 his philanthropic work, but Hayes actually intended these nominations to 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.000 obstruct his rival, Senator Roscoe Conkling, boss of the corrupt 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.320 New York State Republican machine who backed his own nominee. 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.600 The Senate confirmation process dragged on and on, with the 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.040 at the politician's mercy. After more than a month of 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:39.480 tortured waiting, his nomination was rejected. The political machine question 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:43.520 and the little humiliated it. That's Clay Jenkinson, founder of 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:47.120 the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.480 There was a giant personal setback and a kind of 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.520 humiliation of all that she stood for, and young Rosoff 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.520 witnessed this and it made it very angry. It kind 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.720 of added fuel to his righteousness about reform. Shortly after 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.240 being rejected for the customs post, he died from stomach cancer. 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.160 Tierra was then at Harvard studying natural history, but his 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:12.240 father's death helped alter the direction of his life. He 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.680 now felt that a career in public service would be 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.000 the best way to honor his father's memory, and one 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.200 was elected as the youngest member of the New York 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.680 State Assembly. He began as a New York snob, highly 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:30.839 educated dandy who wore really weird clothing and had a 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.840 high pitched voice and was just a kind of an 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.080 eccentric and an outlier and kind of a blue stocking. 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.400 Roosevelt was determined to break the spoil system, but in 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.920 Albany he was shocked to see lobbyists openly bribing legislators 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.480 in the hallways of the Capitol. Meanwhile, lawmaker sponsored bills 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.839 that were unfavorable to corporations, then blackmailed companies so they 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.359 wouldn't pass them. As you was, government is good, but 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:01.200 government has to be honorable. But you have to expect 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:03.120 that the people that you've elected are the people that 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.520 you've appointed their whole bureaucratic positions are trying to do 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.040 the right thing. And when they're not, when they're corruptionists 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.760 or cronies, or lazy or an apt then that just 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:17.680 credits the very idea of government intervention in the life 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.560 of the American people. According to historian Edmund Morris and 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.320 Roosevelt's first forty eight hours on the Committee on Cities, 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.880 he introduced four reform bills, only one past, but he 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.800 had made an impression and a few enemies. When Roosevelt 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.839 decided to push a reform bill through the committee he 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.479 was chairing, several corrupt members teamed up to block it. 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:39.200 T I realized he might need to use a stronger 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.800 weapon than persuasive rhetoric. He hit a broken chair leg 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.080 behind his desk, then announced he would unilaterally approve the 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.520 bill while accusing its opponents of blackmail, which nearly caused 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.240 a riot from his colleagues. Roosevelt wrote later the riot 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:57.120 did not come off partly, I think because the opportune 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.040 production of the chair league had a set native effect. 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.320 Another time, Roosevelt's enemies tried to smear him by enticing 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.919 him into a compromising position with a woman who wasn't 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.440 his wife. Roosevelt balked, then had a detective follow her 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.320 and discovered that he'd avoided a trap. Everyone wanted him 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.320 to shrug his shoulders in the face of the real world, 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.160 and tr could never do that. So then his view was, well, 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.479 if you find a problem, you've got to fix it. 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.960 And when he discovered that many of his political associates 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:30.000 and even allies, we're not actually interested in fixing it, 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:35.000 that they kind of liked the system of cronyism and 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:38.720 they benefited from it, then that really threw him for 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.760 a loop. And so he then has to decide, am 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:45.600 I going to go along or am I going to 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.080 follow my integrity and maybe flame out early? And it 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.440 turns out he was able to master it, but his 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.200 nascent career in Albany was marred by the tragic deaths 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:58.800 of his wife and his mother. On February Tire also 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.320 felt pressure from the mug Umps, a faction of the 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:05.640 Republican Party, to support the Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:11.000 over James G. Blaine, the controversial Republican presidential nominee. Roosevelt 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:15.760 reluctantly stuck with Blaine. After Cleveland's victory, tr sinced his 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:19.000 time in politics was up. He left his infant daughter, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.240 Alice with his sister baby and took off for his 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.480 ranch in the Dakotas. In the West, Roosevelt felt he 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.600 could reinvent himself free from Eastern rules. He dove into 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:30.840 frontier life on his ranch and lived as a local, 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:33.760 writing books, galloping across the plains on his horse, and 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.680 managing a herd of livestock. But he was still drawn 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.440 to New York and to politics. For years, he traveled 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.800 back and forth. He attended political events and began secretly 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.400 courting Edith Kermit Carroll, whom he would marry in eighteen 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.040 eighty six. That winter, severe weather killed his cattle, and 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.000 he had gone through much of his inheritance. His ability 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:54.880 to make a living off of his ranches was seeming 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.520 less likely by the day, and so he turned to 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:02.120 politics again, although a career there also seemed uncertain. According 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.360 to Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt, A strenuous life 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:10.240 the West failed to satisfy tr She writes, he recognized 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.240 that he had not yet lived up to his father's 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.559 and now his own expectation that he would make something 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:19.320 of himself, but he did not know what to do next. Still, 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.280 tr threw himself into campaigning for Benjamin Harrison in the 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:28.680 presidential election. He wanted a job in the administration of Harrison, 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.440 and he wasn't going to get one because he wasn't 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:33.439 far enough along yet and people were frightened of it. 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.160 And so he had to settle for US Soil Service Commissioner, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:39.600 which could have been just a routine sort of thing. 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:41.319 I mean, I can't name a single other U. S 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:45.240 Civil Service commissioner ever, But he decided to make the 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.000 most of it, and he did. The Civil Service commission 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:52.640 managed the government civilian employees Immediately, Roosevelt complained that Harrison's 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:57.240 handpicked Postmaster General Department store magnate John Wanamaker was replacing 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.320 all of the Democratic postmasters with Republicans and ex arding 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.319 money from them. Harrison largely ignored him, leading Roosevelt to fume, 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:08.440 Wannamaker has been as outrageously disagreeable as he could possibly be. 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:11.920 We have done our best to get on smoothly with him, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.120 but he is an ill conditioned creature. Undeterred, Roosevelt launched 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.800 a successful campaign to root out corrupt postal officials. As 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.200 historian Leonard White writes, t r struck terror into the 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.320 hearts of contumacious postmasters and collectors of customs. He wasn't 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.160 afraid to take on his own political party, because if 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.200 they challenged him and said, well, back away from this 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.400 corruption in this post office, or back away from Wanamaker, 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.880 He'd said, well, wait a minute, I'm reading the law. 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.120 The law says we need to clean up these things, 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.320 and that's precisely what I'm doing. Are you're telling me 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.040 you want me to give up merely on the basis 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.880 of partisan politics, And they, of course they wanted to say, yet, 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.320 that's exactly what we're telling you. But they couldn't because 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.400 he was right. They were always about to fire him. 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.160 After five years as commissioner, Tier was itching for a 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.400 new challenge. One revealed itself in his home city of 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.560 New York. A committee of Republican officials tried to draft 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.000 him as their candidate for mayor. Tier's wife, Edith, argued 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.160 against that plan. It would cost too much money, especially 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:17.280 if he ended up losing. Tire conceded, but immediately regretted it. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.559 A reform minded Republican, William L. Strong, eventually one he 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.240 offered Roosevelt, who had been campaigning for a job and 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.280 intriguing gig New York City Police Commissioner. One of four 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.400 men to hold the role, tr was elected the board's president. 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:34.439 At that time, corruption was as much a part of 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.960 the police department as badges and night sticks. It supported 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.400 a seedy underworld where prostitution, alcohol, gambling, and graft thrived. 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.760 As one example, a captain named Joseph Eakins was accused 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.320 of allowing brothels in his precinct to operate while he 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:52.080 looked the other way. On Roosevelt's first day at police headquarters, 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.600 a chief told him that his efforts at reform would 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:58.360 be useless. It will break you, you will yield. You 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:03.000 are but human. Chief Thomas Byrne said, Tier never took 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.000 a threat lying down. So you've got to clean that 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.360 up so that people have trust in government. And then 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:11.360 when government has to do the hard things which it 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.560 sometimes has to do, the people will swallow hard and 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:18.240 accept it. But if government is filled with just these 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.760 these thuggish people who are in it for themselves and 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.360 their cronies, then the people are not going to have 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.920 confidence in government's ability to improve our lives. And so 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:28.959 that's sort of the groundwork for what he called the 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.040 Square Deal. Roosevelt enlisted Jacob Reese to show him the 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.240 real face of the city after dark, and the photojournalist 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:39.760 knew what to show him. Saloons were whiskey float on Sundays, 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:44.360 brothels operating under police protection, two immigrant families renting a 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.440 single room in a tenement, children sleeping in the filth 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.400 slicked streets. The sites deeply affected Roosevelt. A year after 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:54.880 he became police commissioner, a deadly heat wave struck New 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.040 York City. Tire saw children sleeping on roofs and fire 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.200 escapes to beat the heat, so times they fell off 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.840 during the night. When the city failed to respond to 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.840 the crisis, Roosevelt had his police officers give out free 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.280 ice to poor residents. According to Edward Khne, author of 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.200 Hot Time in the Old Town, Tire personally supervised the 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.360 distribution of ice and visited their homes to make sure 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:18.800 they were okay. I mean, he felt a deep sympathy 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.480 for the underdog, the underclass in America and realized that 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.280 these were not bumbs. They were recent immigrants, for the 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:28.520 most part, helpless with little or no English, and no 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.520 skills that really would command the market. And they were exploitable, 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.120 and they were being exploited, and he felt this, this 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.199 isn't fair. Were too great a country to have this 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:43.240 sort of desperation being preyed upon by corporate capitalism. Roosevelt 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:47.319 and the three other police commissioners systematically removed the police brass, 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.520 including Eagans and Burns, who had allowed graft to flourish. 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.360 He appointed Peter Conlin as the new chief of police. Next, 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.000 Roosevelt took on enforcement of the ban on saloons selling 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.480 liquor on Sundays, the Sunday Excise Law, as it was 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.320 formerly called had been around in some form since eighteen 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.920 fifty seven, but there were loopholes allowing hotel restaurants to 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.880 sell alcohol to their guests. It also didn't address private clubs, 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.160 which sold drinks to their dues paying members. That meant 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.600 the law largely affected working class bars frequented by immigrants, 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:23.280 but to tr it seemed like a win win. Richard Zach's, 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.240 author of Island of Vice, Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to clean 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.360 up sin Loving New York, writes that tr had two 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.520 main reasons for enforcement. One, he wanted to demonstrate the 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.360 new found incorruptibility of his police force. Zax writes that 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.720 Roosevelt tried to frame it not as a crusade against liquor, 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.760 but rather against blackmail and selective enforcement of the law. 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.920 To Roosevelt knew that saloons acted as unofficial clubhouses for 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:53.560 Tammany Hall, Zax continues, by closing them on Sunday, he 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.800 could strip the democratic machine of its favored meeting places. 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.880 Tr told the New York Evening Sun do not deal 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:04.880 with public sentiment. I deal with the law. But his 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.720 actions caused enormous controversy. We now know that it was 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.120 really hard on immigrants who were working six days a week, 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.679 and these saloons were not like bars. You go slam 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.040 a few down, and there were social clubs of the time. 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.160 People were rightly offended by this and knowing that the 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.800 rich had access to all of their private clubs, but 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.280 that the regular citizens of New York, in particularly German 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:33.000 American immigrants, were being singled out by the enforcement of 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:38.320 this law. On Sunday, June, Roosevelt deployed more than two 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.760 thousand officers to monitor about eight thousand saloons across New York. 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.280 Pub owners signaled their compliance by raising their window shades 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.200 to reveal empty bar rooms. The campaign deprived thousands of 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.600 New Yorkers of a relaxing beer on their only day 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.440 off from work, but some found a way around the 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:57.880 excise law. Drinkers traveled all the way to Coney Island 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:01.480 in Brooklyn, which was a separate city until and outside 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.280 TRS jurisdiction. Others tried to enter saloons through the side door, 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.680 but many were turned away. The next Saturday, Mayor Strong 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:10.800 and Roosevelt gave a press conference on the steps of 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.280 City Hall. A large crowd of German American residents who 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:18.560 traditionally drank beer at family gatherings on Sundays, denounced TR's 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.960 enforcement as too broad. It was unfair, they said, for 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.880 vice written saloons and wholesome family picnics to be caught 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.160 in the same net. Moreover, German immigrants as a whole 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:32.760 supported Mayor Strong and felt betrayed. According to zax Otto Kempner, 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.040 a leader in the German American community, shouted, only biggots 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:39.840 could enforce such laws. It is an assinine exercise of authority. 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:43.880 Tr word back. You people want me to enforce the 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.600 law only a little bit, a little teeny bit. I 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.160 do not know how to do such a thing, and 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:54.040 I shall not begin to learn now. The disagreement looked 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.400 like it would come to a head. In September, about 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.280 thirty thousand German Americans turned out for a huge parade 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:04.160 of Lexington Avenue to celebrate liberty and beer. One of 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.960 the organizers trolled Police Commissioner Roosevelt with a formal invitation 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.600 to the festivities, more as a taunt or a joke, 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:14.480 according to Zack's but they evidently didn't know t R 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.120 very well. My favorite of all the stories is when 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.080 he's invited to the German American Parade um and he goes, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.400 even though I mean they didn't really want him to come. 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.360 They just wanted to snub him. So he goes, and 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:28.440 he's up there and he's watching the whole parade, and 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.720 then some guy in the group and he calls out, 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:35.320 for those of you who don't speak German, that's where 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:40.520 is Roosevelt. And instead of like ducking been here, which 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.520 translates to here I am, here I am, And he 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:45.400 kind of turned it around. They kind of lowed him, 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.120 Like the guy has so much courage and he's so game, 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.840 he's so willing to do this stuff. Roosevelt also fought 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.960 the city's rampant prostitution. Unlike his peers, he believed the 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:58.160 male customers were as much a part of the problem 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.960 as the female workers. In his autobiography, he wrote, public 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.439 opinion and the law should combine to hunt down the 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:09.840 flagrant man swine who himself hunts down poor or silly 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.760 or unprotected girls. Our duty to achieve the same moral 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.800 level for the two sexes must be performed by raising 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.399 the level for the man, not by lowering it for 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:22.240 the woman. As with the saloons, corruption in the police 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:26.360 department allowed illegal brothels to remain open for business. Roosevelt 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.000 fired at least one officer for negligence in enforcing laws 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:33.040 against prostitution, but some newspaper editorials accused Roosevelt of prudish 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.560 heavy handedness. The New York Mercury called the officers firing 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.439 as gross and active injustice as was ever seen at 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.879 a Massachusetts witch burning, and said Roosevelt was a blue 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:47.080 blooded knickerbocker puritan gone to seed a minor scandal instud 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:49.960 when an officer arrested a young woman who was merely 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.000 lost in asking a man for directions on suspicion of 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:57.359 being a prostitute. Newspapers protested the besmirching of an innocent 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.720 girl's honor by an over zealous police force. She was 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.000 acquitted of the charges, and Roosevelt suffered an embarrassing defeat. 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.440 An attempt to regain the moral high ground by reading 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:12.159 the city's most elegant brothel also backfired. Roosevelt would not 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.960 be dissuaded. If the law was on the books, he 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:18.160 would enforce it, but his black and white world view 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:22.560 was not universally popular or practical. Tr squabbled with the 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:26.560 other commissioners. Despite their common motives, citizens evaded the saloon 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.800 closures and solicitation laws. Some officials felt that Tier's outsized 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.880 personality got in the way, and in eight the consolidation 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.159 of all five boroughs into the City of Greater New 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.440 York meant that the city's police commission would be replaced 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:44.000 with a new leadership structure. Seeing the end of his 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.440 usefulness in New York, Roosevelt campaigned for a higher profile 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:51.920 position in the McKinley administration, and he got it. We'll 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:59.159 be right back in Roosevelt began to emerge as a 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.480 national polity goal figure. Newly elected President William McKinley appointed 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.919 him Assistant Secretary of the Navy against the wishes of 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.359 his boss, Secretary of the Navy, John Davis Long. Roosevelt 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:12.760 pushed to build up the nation's fleet of battleships while 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.400 keeping a close eye on matters in Asia and the Caribbean. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.600 After a suspicious explosion destroyed the U S. S. Maine 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.919 in Havannah Harbor, Cuba, the US declared war on Spain. 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.080 Tr quit his post and formed the first U. S. 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.679 Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He and his troops. The rough Riders 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.760 charged up Kettle Hill and helped win a decisive battle 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:33.920 on San Juan Hill that quickly led to a US 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:37.640 victory in the Spanish American War. Back in New York, 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:40.159 the Republican Party persuaded Tire to run for governor on 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.439 the strength of his war record. He won by a 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.120 narrow margin, but soon moved up in the world, partly 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.960 because the Republican machine wanted the reform minded rough Rider 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.159 out of their hair. He became McKinley's running mate, and 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.760 on November six he was elected Vice President of the 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:58.399 United States. When McKinley won a second term. Less than 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:00.920 a year later, McKinley was assassin needd and tr was 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.200 sworn in as president. And if anyone thought he would 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.200 ease up on his campaign against corruption as president, well 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:11.679 that was wishful thinking. As Chief executive, Roosevelt continued his 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:15.800 war on spoils. He took on the trust's mega corporations 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.360 that controlled multiple companies at once, which were increasingly prevalent 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.400 in the Gilded Age. Trusts could be used to create 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.439 monopolies which might unilaterally dictate prices for goods and services. 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.560 Monopolies were great for tycoons, who argued that they eliminated 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.840 inefficiencies among the companies they owned, but they were bad 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.119 for consumers, who had to pay whatever prices the monopolies charged. 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:40.879 Congress had attempted to regulate trusts to prevent the creation 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:43.960 of monopolies with the Sherman Antitrust Act in eighteen ninety. 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:49.240 The legislation prohibited every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.760 of trade, as well as any attempt to form a 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:56.720 monopoly to unreasonably impede fair trade. Unfortunately, the law failed 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.600 to define terms like trust, monopoly, and conspiracy, and the 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:05.199 loose wording made the law hard to enforce. In the 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:08.320 Supreme Court decided in an antitrust case that the defendant, 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.160 a sugar company that controlled of all U S sugar refining, 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.240 had not violated the Sherman Act. That ruling basically ended 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.760 the government's attempts to reign in trusts. In nineteen o one, 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.960 railroad magnates James J. Hill and E. H. Harryman, along 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:27.520 with banker JP Morgan, formed the Northern Securities Company, merging 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.280 three of the largest railroads in the Upper Midwest. Instantly, 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.520 Northern Securities became the second largest company in the world 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.000 behind US Steel, and had a capital stock of four 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:42.280 hundred million dollars. Critics fear that Northern Securities monopoly would 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.240 allow it to dictate shipping prices from Chicago to Seattle, 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:50.639 in other words, impede fair trade. Enter President Roosevelt's we 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:53.200 realized government's going to have to play a role here 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:57.800 because there's no other counterway for these gigantic accumulations of 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.040 wealth and power in the hands of people like Rockefeller 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.560 or JP Morgan, or incorporations like US Steel or the 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.480 railroad trusts. And so he realized that unions weren't ready 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.960 yet to be a sufficient counterweight, and that government was 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.280 going to have to find some way of protecting the 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.800 have nots to provide what pr called the square deal. 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:20.600 If you actually unpack the metaphor of the square deal, 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:22.960 it's profound. In his view, is that if life is 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.640 a game of poker and cards are shuffled, you might 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:27.680 get a great hand, that I might get a weak one. 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.800 That's just how life works. But if the dealer is 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.200 putting cards from under the deck into his crony's hands, 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.160 or is miss shuffling, then that's not a square deal. 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:43.000 But as long as the dealing is square, people will 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:46.680 accept that life is not equal and fair for everybody 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.560 and they but they won't question the system. He felt 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:51.760 that it was essential that the people have a great 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:56.080 deal of trust in their government. Roosevelt hinted to Congress 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.840 that he was planning to challenge the Northern Securities Company 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:01.399 when he said in his annual Message the government should 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:04.240 have the right to inspect and examine the workings of 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:09.040 the great corporations engaged in interstate business. The following February, 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:13.080 ignoring advice from GOP leaders, Roosevelt instructed his Attorney General, 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:15.800 Philander Knox to sue the monopoly on the grounds that 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.240 it violated the Sherman Act. According to Larry Haig, author 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:22.439 of Harryman Versus Hill wall Street's Great Railroad War, it 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:26.280