ere unfit for human habitations. New York City was crowded with such
buildings, but nobody had ordered them torn down, because either nobody
wanted to bother, or the owners paid blackmail money to keep them
standing for the rent they could get out of them.

"Those tenements must come down," said Theodore Roosevelt.

"If you order them down, the owners will fight you to the bitter end,"
said another officer of the department.

"I don't care if they do. The houses are a menace to life and health.
They are filthy, and if a fire ever started in them, some would prove
regular traps. They have got to go." And shortly after that about a
hundred were seized, and the most destroyed.

The enforcement of the Sunday liquor law was another thing that
occasioned great surprise during Mr. Roosevelt's term as Police
Commissioner. In the past, saloons had been almost as wide open on
Sundays as on week days. On account of the cosmopolitan character of the
population it was thought that to close up the saloons on Sundays would
be impossible. But the police force was given strict orders, and on one
Sunday in June, 1895, New York City had the first "dry" Sunday that it
could remember in many years.

This "dry" Sunday provoked a new storm of opposition, especially from
many of foreign birth, who were used to getting liquor as easily on that
day as on any other. More threats were made against the vigorous
commissioner, and on two occasions dynamite bombs were placed in his
desk, evidently with the hope that they would explode and blow him to
pieces. But the bombs were found in time, and no damage was done, and
Theodore Roosevelt paid scant attention to them.

After that he was attacked in a new way. Some of the politicians laid
traps for him whereby they hoped to bring discredit to his management of
the department. The fight grew very hot and very bitter, and he was
accused of doing many things, "just for the looks of them," rather than
to benefit the public at large. But he kept on his way, and at last the
opposition were silenced to such an extent that they merely growled
behind his back.

For many years a large number of shiftless and often lawless men, and
women too, were attracted to the metropolis because of the "Tramps'
Lodging Houses" located there. These resorts were continually filled by
vagrants who would not work and who were a constant menace to society at
large.

"We must get rid of those lodging houses," said Mr. Roose