day after day, in this way, or only your realization of our necessities?"

"Why, our clients-" began the lawyer.

"Yes, I know all about your clients," burst in the Assistant Secretary. "I congratulate them on having an attorney who will do work for them which he wouldn't have the face to do for himself. I should think, after having enjoyed the honors you have at the hands of the Government, you'd feel a keen pride in your present occupation! No, I don't want any more of your old tubs. The one I bought yesterday is good for nothing except to sink somewhere in the path of the enemy's fleet. It will be God's mercy if she doesn't go down with brave men on her-men who go to war and risk their lives, instead of staying home to sell rotten hulks to the Government."

The air of the attorney as he bowed himself out was almost pitiable. The special glint did not fade from Mr. Roosevelt's glasses, nor · did his jaws relax or his fist unclench, till the door closed on the retreating figure. Then his face lighted with a smile as he advanced to greet me.

"You came just in time," he cried. "I wanted you to hear what I had to say to that

CLOSING SUNDAY SALOONS

fellow; not"-and here his voice rose on the high falsetto wave which is always a sign that he is enjoying an idea while framing it in words -"not that it would add materially to the sum of your pleasure, but that it would humiliate him to have any one else present while I gave him his punishment. It is the only means I have of getting even."

One of the enterprises on which Mr. Roosevelt had set his heart when he accepted the Police Commissionership in New York was the closing of the saloons on Sunday. This was not because he was a teetotaler himself, or an extremist as to Sunday observance. But he was an out-and-out believer in the rule of law, and if a law was on the statute-book, and he was appointed a public agent to enforce it, enforced it should be. When the State got tired of the operation of any law, it was privileged to repeal it; but he would have no hand in keeping it alive but crippled.

Moreover, the half-way measures formerly pursued had not only put a premium on lawbreaking, but lent a certain dignity to blackmail by making it an official trade. The saloonkeepers who were able and willing to bribe the police, or produce so many votes on election

day, for the privilege of keeping a side-door open, had been allowed to do so, while those who were too decent or too poor were either compelled to close or brought under the heavy hand of the law.

There was no uncertain ring about the course he took in breaking up this condition of things. It startled the machine politicians of his own party, who charged to it and to his general attitude toward the enforcement of the liquor laws the success of Tammany Hall in the fall elections that year. It is all very well to say, as they have said repeatedly, that such a reform as he instituted does no good in a city like New York, which, as soon as it passes under another rule, slips back into its old course as if there had never been any interruption; every thinking man knows that such reasoning is false. New York's police system has never got back to where it was before Mr. Roosevelt took hold of its administration. Till then good citizens had been beguiled with the plea that enforcement of the liquor laws was an impossibility; he showed that it was not. He did not set up a perfect reform mechanism, one which would run itself; but he proved that certain limitations formerly accepted without ques

but

TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN

tion did not exist except in timid minds, and that all that was needed was a man at the helm with the strength and the nerve to disregard them and try for something better. Having demonstrated the fact that the liquor laws can be enforced a good deal more effectually than the laws against forgery or theft, Commissioner Roosevelt did leave his native city in better condition than he found it. He had at least set a pace which none of his successors can shirk on the ground of its impracticability.

It will probably never be possible to reconcile to the minds of many upright New Yorkers the means adopted by the Police Board during this period, chiefly at the instance of Mr. Roosevelt, to obtain evidence against the saloonkeepers who made a practise of selling liquor to minors. Here was another case where the lesser good, in his judgment, had to give way to the larger. The traffic in strong drink among children had swelled to hideous proportions. The best estimates the board could obtain indicated that more than half the habitual drunkards who figured in the New York police courts had become such before they had reached the age at which they could lawfully buy intoxicants. Appalling crimes and catastrophes oc

curred continually which could be traced to the drunkenness of the child victims.

Of

A boy who was regularly sent to buy liquor for the operatives in the factory where he was employed acquired a taste for it himself, and, falling into a drunken stupor one day in an empty building, was eaten alive by rats. It was such horrible examples of the evil, together with the earnest pleas of good men and women who labored among the poor in the slums, that settled in Mr. Roosevelt's mind the purpose to root out the abuse by any device within his reach, however liable to misconstruction. course, the only way to do this was to capture the miscreants who habitually sold liquor to children and send them to prison, till enough had been punished to terrorize any other barkeepers who were liable to commit the same crime. Equally of course, an adult could not procure the necessary evidence unaided, neither could a child whom a dram-seller did not know and whom he might therefore suspect of being a spy. The only means open was to take a child who had formerly purchased liquor at a certain place, send it again on the same errand, and make it furnish the proof required as the basis of a warrant for the dealer.