海角大神

In the 1880s and 1890s, vice never slept in New York City.

Gamblers gambled, prostitutes prostituted, and thieves thieved, all under the not-so-careful聽watch of police on the take. Then an aristocratic little man named Theodore Roosevelt decided聽to make a big difference.

Cocky and sure of himself, Roosevelt became an unyielding force. He stalked the streets of the聽city in search of corrupt cops and made a stink about a police department that barely seemed to聽police anything.

The ultimate fate of Roosevelt's efforts can be found in the title of historian Richard Zacks' new聽book, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York. Never mind the giveaway of the ending. "Island of Vice" is a rollicking tale of hedonism and聽hypocrisy, crime and corruption, and one man's refusal to accept any of it.

In an interview from his home in New York City, Zacks 鈥� who previously made a splash with his聽book "The Pirate Hunter" 鈥� describes the sinful world of the Big Apple, Roosevelt's remarkable聽nighttime excursions and the guts of a man who refused to take get-lost for an answer.

Q: Just how bad was vice in New York City before the turn of the century?

A: It was extraordinarily full of vice. About 40,000 prostitutes were working in the city at the聽time, and there were many brothels, casinos and bookie joints. As for alcohol, clubs, and bars were supposed to close at one in the morning. But some couldn't聽remember being closed since the Civil War.聽All of these activities were illegal, so somebody had to pay off the police to make it happen.

Q: A few years ago, I interviewed Karen Abbott, the author of "Sin in the Second City: Madams,聽Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America's Soul." She told me that some upstanding聽people at that time thought it was a good idea to isolate vice into specific neighborhoods so they聽wouldn't corrupt the good people.聽Was this an issue in New York City?

A: There was a debate about having regulated red-light districts, which they had in most of the聽European countries. But the purest reformers rejected it.聽In New York City, a police official testified in 1885 that there should be red-light districts in the聽city. Cynical types thought he wanted to bring in one-stop shopping so he could collect money聽more easily.

Q: How rampant was prostitution at that time?

A: Emma Goldman, the labor radical, thought about 100 percent of single men and about 50聽percent of married men went to prostitutes in that era. It gives you a sense of how widespread it was. The thing that most people now don鈥檛 realize about prostitution was that almost no respectable聽women went to the bars at that time. If a woman was in a bar at night, she tended to be a聽prostitute.

Q: As your book showed, one of the top anti-vice activists was an incredible hypocrite.聽Hypocrisy, of course, is common in many do-gooder movements, as is self-righteousness. But聽Roosevelt, several years from becoming president, doesn't come across as either a hypocrite or聽a prig. Is that your sense too?

A: He wasn't a hypocrite. He was a happily married man who wasn't sneaking off to the brothels.聽And he was by no means as self-righteous as some of the more church- and temperance-oriented reformers. But he did irritate people.

Q: Why did he think the city needed to be cleaned up?

A: He was a student of how corrupt the municipal governments of America were, how they鈥檇聽been taken over by corrupt political organizations. He thought if he cleaned up New York, the聽Sodom of the country, it would have a snowball effect. If you could do it here, you could clean聽up any city.

Q: On some nights, he'd wander the streets of the city incognito and confront cops who聽weren't doing their jobs. What would happen?

A: The cops would say "I'm going to beat you!" or "I'm going to fan you!" with their nightstick.聽That鈥檚 when he was really popular. Nobody had so blatantly stood up to the cops like that. This聽5-foot-8, 5-foot-9 little aristocrat confronting big Irish guys and lecturing them!聽I really don't think he did it as a publicity stunt, but it worked out to be one of the greatest聽publicity stunts. The city loved it at first, and the country loved it.

Q: What turned the city against him?

A: The crackdown on saloons being open on Sundays. When the city realized that this聽passionate man was actually going to really go through with it and never back down, he became聽despised in some quarters, and 30,000 people got in the streets to protest his policy.聽The immigrant cauldron of New York refused to be sober on Sundays. It was going to find a way聽around this crackdown, and it did, but not in a way anyone expected. They found a loophole,聽and suddenly everything backfired.

Q: What happened in the long term to Roosevelt's anti-vice and anti-crime efforts?

A: A lot of the things that Roosevelt cracked down on are now legal. He wanted to reinforce laws聽about not serving alcohol on Sundays; now bars can serve it on Sundays. He was cracking on聽off-track betting parlors, and now we have those. We have casinos not too far away, and the聽lottery.聽Society has just changed its opinions about a lot of the things that Roosevelt was cracking down聽on.

Q: What about the Wild West nature of New York City?

A: It has definitely gotten tamer.聽Here's an ultimate example: My teenage son called me. He said, "Don鈥檛 worry about me, I'm in聽Times Square."聽It's like a mall now. He doesn't know any better.

Q: What can we learn about Roosevelt in this whole story?

A: The big thing that still astounds me is that he did not back down even though he ultimately had a聽vast majority of the city and police department opposing him.聽When he took a poll, he took a poll of one: he asked himself what was the best thing to do. They聽don鈥檛 make politicians like that any more.

Randy Dotinga is a Monitor contributor.