Roosevelt on the Beat

I. Roosevelt and Jacob Riis

A. Police Commissioner Roosevelt--Roosevelt was asked to serve on the Board of Commissioners for the New York City Police Department after he turned  down an opportunity to be a Street Cleaning Commissioner in 1894. Roosevelt had contemplated running again for mayor (reform candidate William L. Strong won the race, making Roosevelt even more rueful).

1. Edith Roosevelt's lackluster support--when Roosevelt discussed his candidacy with his wife, her reluctance  to leave Washington, D.C. for the vagaries of New York City politics was visible, and Roosevelt withdrew his name from consideration as a candidate.

2.  Temporary rift--Roosevelt gave in on this point,  but immediately left  to go on another western hunting trip. Upon his return, his continued  brooding over this subject left his wife feeling somewhat ill at ease, but eventually Roosevelt got over  this episode. 

B. Jacob Riis--an immigrant from Denmark, migrated to the United States in 1870. His experience as an immigrant was an extremely difficult one, and acquainted him with the dark underside that was part of the immigrant experience. He eventually landed a job with the New York Tribune as a police reporter. His most famous bit of writing is contained in a book he produced, called How the Other Half Lives, which helped connect him with Theodore Roosevelt when Roosevelt became a police commissioner in the latter part of the 1880s.

1. Life  as an Immigrant--Riis had a difficult experience as  an immigrant to the United States.He arrived  in the country as a skilled carpenter, but had much difficulty in finding steady  work. Eventually, he had  enough good fortune and hard work to return to Denmark to claim the love of his life--and then the couple returned to the United States

2. New York Tribune--After returning to the United States, Riis lived next door to one of the editors of the  New York Tribune, and the paper  agreed to make him their police reporter. This situation was reminiscent of his own immigrant experience, and he became determined to expose this  unpleasant life to a wider public.


3. Riis takes up  photography--although Riis'  melodramatic way of writing  effectively  dramatized the conditions that  he observed in the slums of New York  City, Riis found that  when he incorporated photography that his work had  a much bigger  impact.

C. Roosevelt and Riis--Riis was a great admirer of Roosevelt, and offered to  take TR on guided  tours  of the seamy underside of the city; Roosevelt, looking to make his mark on the Board of Commissioners, readily agreed to this  arrangement.

1. Traveling in disguise--both Roosevelt  and Riis traveled throughout NYC in disguise, to ensure that the  police were patrolling and doing the job they were hired to do. How effective these disguises were may  be  questioned, since to men traveled with an extensive entourage of newspaper writers to ensure that the event got the proper amount of press coverage.

2. Publicity--both men realized that the publicity these little jaunts to the seamy underworld were necessary to begin to change the conditions they encountered--nor did they do  any  harm to Roosevelt's political career.

a. In these little  midnight escapades, Riis was able to demonstrate to Roosevelt  the consequences of the rates  that his rich friends derived from what they charged the working families they rented rooms in their tenements to.

b. The attendent publicity also made him a figure of some fun, with street  merchants selling "Rosies"--false buck teeth to approximate his increasingly famous grin, as well as whistles to "warn" police of Roosevelt's imminent arrival. Roosevelt's ability to laugh at his own foibles was one of his  most endearing personality quirks.