The lawbreaker found it out who predicted
scornfully that he would "knuckle down to politics the way they all
did," and lived to respect him, though he swore at him, as the one
of them all who was stronger than pull. The peace-loving citizen
who hastened to Police Headquarters with anxious entreaties to
"use discretion" in the enforcement of unpopular laws found it out
and went away with a new and breathless notion welling up in him
of an official's 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 it everything was transformed.
[Illustration: President Theodore Roosevelt of the Police Board.]
Not all at once. It took us weary months to understand that the
shouting 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. It was never so much alive as under Tammany, but it
was enforced only against those saloon-keepers who needed discipline.
It was a Tammany club, used to drive them into camp with; and it
was used so vigorously that no less than eight thousand arrests
were made under it in the year before Roosevelt made them all close
up.
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