Roosevelt had discovered that the patrolman's record showed
him to be sober, trustworthy, and strictly attentive to duty, he secured
his promotion at once.

So the Police Commission, during those two years, under the driving
force of Roosevelt's example and spirit, went about the regeneration of
the force whose former proud title of "The Finest" had been besmirched
by those who should have been its champions and defenders. Politics,
favoritism, and corruption were knocked out of the department with all
the thoroughness that the absurd bipartisan scheme of administration
would permit.

The most spectacular fight of all was against the illegal operations of
the saloons. The excise law forbade the sale of liquor on Sunday.
But the police, under orders from "higher up," enforced the law with
discretion. The saloons which paid blackmail, or which enjoyed the
protection of some powerful Tammany chieftain, sold liquor on Sunday
with impunity. Only those whose owners were recalcitrant or without
influence were compelled to obey the law.

Now a goodly proportion of the population of New York, as of any great
city, objects strenuously to having its personal habits interfered with
by the community. This is just as true now in the days of prohibition as
it was then in the days of "Sunday closing." So when Roosevelt came
into office with the simple, straightforward conviction that laws on the
statute books were intended to be enforced and proceeded to close all
the saloons on Sunday, the result was inevitable. The professional
politicians foamed at the mouth. The yellow press shrieked and lied.
The saloon-keepers and the sharers of their illicit profits wriggled and
squirmed. But the saloons were closed. The law was enforced without fear
or favor. The Sunday sale of liquor disappeared from the city, until a
complaisant judge, ruling upon the provision of the law which permitted
drink to be sold with a meal, decreed that one pretzel, even when
accompanied by seventeen beers, made a "meal." No amount of honesty and
fearlessness in the enforcement of the law could prevail against such
judicial aid and comfort to the cause of nullification. The main purpose
of Roosevelt's fight for Sunday closing, the stopping of blackmail, was,
however, achieved. A standard of law enforcement was set which shows
what can be done even with an unpopular law, and in New York City
itself, if the will to deal honestly and without cowardice is there.

So