were alike. After the election
in 1894 I had written him a letter which ran in part as follows:

It is very important to the city to have a business man's Mayor, but it
is more important to have a workingman's Mayor; and I want Mr. Strong to
be that also. . . . It is an excellent thing to have rapid transit, but
it is a good deal more important, if you look at matters with a proper
perspective, to have ample playgrounds in the poorer quarters of the
city, and to take the children off the streets so as to prevent them
growing up toughs. In the same way it is an admirable thing to have
clean streets; indeed, it is an essential thing to have them; but it
would be a better thing to have our schools large enough to give ample
accommodation to all who should be pupils and to provide them with
proper playgrounds.

And I added, while expressing my regret that I had not been able to
accept the street-cleaning commissionership, that "I would have
been delighted to smash up the corrupt contractors and put the
street-cleaning force absolutely out of the domain of politics."

This was nineteen years ago, but it makes a pretty good platform in
municipal politics even to-day--smash corruption, take the municipal
service out of the domain of politics, insist upon having a Mayor who
shall be a workingman's Mayor even more than a business man's Mayor, and
devote all attention possible to the welfare of the children.

Therefore, as I viewed it, there were two sides to the work: first, the
actual handling of the Police Department; second, using my position to
help in making the city a better place in which to live and work for
those to whom the conditions of life and labor were hardest. The two
problems were closely connected; for one thing never to be forgotten in
striving to better the conditions of the New York police force is the
connection between the standard of morals and behavior in that force and
the general standard of morals and behavior in the city at large. The
form of government of the Police Department at that time was such as
to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results. It
represented that device of old-school American political thought, the
desire to establish checks and balances so elaborate that no man shall
have power enough to do anything very bad. In practice this always means
that no man has power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad
is done anyhow.

In most positions the "division