The firemen complained that
fires at night gained too much headway while the police slept.
There was no Roosevelt to wake them up.
Looking after his patrolmen was not the only errand that took him
abroad at night. As Police President, Mr. Roosevelt was a member
of the Health Board, and sometimes it was the tenements we went
inspecting when the tenants slept. He was after facts, and learned
speedily to get them as he could. When, as Governor, he wanted
to know just how the Factory Law was being executed, he came down
from Albany and spent a whole day with me personally investigating
tenements in which sweating was carried on. I had not found
a Governor before, or a Police President either, who would do it;
but so he learned exactly what he wanted to know, and what he ought
to do, and did it.
I never saw Theodore Roosevelt to better advantage than when he
confronted the labor men at their meeting-place, Clarendon Hall.
The police were all the time having trouble with strikers and
their "pickets." Roosevelt saw that it was because neither party
understood fully the position of the other and, with his usual
directness, sent word to the labor organizations that he would
like to talk it over with them.
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