Page:American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt.djvu/132

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AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF

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