In 1895, Theodore Roosevelt became one of 4 police commissioners for the City of New York, at that a municipality restricted to Manhattan and part of the Bronx. This appointment was the result of a reverend Pankhurst denouncing (in one the toniest churches in the city) the deep involvement of the local government, starting with the police, in taking payoffs to look the other way regarding prostitution, gambling, and drinking. After Pankhurst's initial sermon, he was sued (!) by the city for slander, as he had not personally witnessed what he complained of. After that he hired a private detective to show himself and a parishioner around illustrative examples of vice, focusing mainly on prostitution. The upshot of this was that the Democratic Party and in particular the Tammany Hall machine lost the mayoral election to a reform candidate, who appointed Roosevelt, Grant (son of General Grant), a Mr. Parker and a Mr. Andrews. Although Roosevelt was the President of the board, this was basically a titular distinction as most important decisions required unanimity and the board was composed of two Republicans and two Democrats.

Despite this unpromising arrangement, for many months the board stuck together. They did remove a number of the more flagrantly corrupt officers, and instigate other reforms such as requiring marksmanship practice. The precinct captains seem to be the officers in the best position to collect bribes, but the payoffs went throughout the hierarchy.

Roosevelt, initially popular, became rapidly unpopular as a result of his fairly successful attempt to close the saloons on Sunday in accordance with the law. Many people who seem to have liked the idea of a non-corrupt police force seemed to prefer alcohol to honesty if that was the choice. Roosevelt's claim that he was enforcing the laws impartially did not go over well with the thirsty, and in any case, given the numerous statutes even then, it was admistratively impossible to apply equal effort to the enforcement of every statute.

The state legislature undid, apparently unintentionally, Roosevelt's partial success by modifying the law so as to make serving drinks in saloons more difficult, while allowing any hotel with at least 10 hotel rooms to serve alcohol at any time, provided it was served with a meal. This law rapidly caused many a former saloon to remodel so as to have 10 hotel rooms, no matter how small, and serve alcohol with the smallest possible meal (often uneaten by the customer). The more useable of the newly constructed rooms made prostitution even harder to restrain, as actual bordellos were no longer strictly needed.

By this time the police board had mostly fallen out with one another, apparently initially over minor personnel matters. On important matters it was generally Roosevelt and Andrews versus Grant and Parker. Roosevelt was happy to leave New York for the position of assistant secretary of the Navy in the new McKinley administration in 1896.

When Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn were amalgamated with New York City in 1898, one of the officers that Roosevelt and the board had striven to remove from the police force became chief.

I found the book instructive and often amusing, sometimes disgusting (the stale beer saloons were what got me), though I suspect the author is underplaying the actual problems (such as slavery) associated with prostitution.