the bunco-steerer, the law-breaking liquor seller, the gambler, and the keeper of a disorderly house are no longer protected; and the Police no longer obtain from them either money or information to assist in their warfare against burglars, highway robbers, and murderers. Nevertheless, so great has been the improvement in the spirit of the Force that they have actually, although deprived of their former corrupt allies, done better work than ever before against those criminals who threatened life and property. Fewer crimes of violence, fewer murders and burglaries, relatively to the population of the city, have occurred than in the past; while the total number of arrests of criminals has increased, and the number of cases in which no arrest followed the commission of a crime has decreased. At one time certain of the more timid or less conscientious members of the well-to-do classes in the community, being misled by the interested clamor of certain of the newspapers, allies or tools of the beneficiaries of the system of corruption, actually wished the Board to go back to the old evil methods, and to tolerate blackmail and vice, if by so doing they could put a stop to crimes of violence. The Board refused to consider for one moment the readoption of any such policy; it insisted on entire honesty in the Force, and demanded at the same time a greater degree of efficiency than ever before. The result has amply justified its judgment." More than this: "The Liquor Tax Law has lightened our labors considerably, because of the excellent provision requiring saloon-keepers to keep their bars exposed during prohibited hours. On the other hand, we have met with considerable difficulty owing to the establishment of 'fake hotels,' and the acceptance by the courts of the theory that a man who purchases a sandwich in a hotel is a guest; that he is entitled to consider that sandwich, whether eaten or not, as a meal, and is entitled to have all the liquor he wants with it." The picturesque side of Mr. Roosevelt's experience as Police Commissioner has been given in a most entertaining way by Mr. Jacob A. Riis, one of the friends of Roosevelt who has been a helper all along the roads of reforms: "Haroun-al-Roosevelt the newspapers have nicknamed the President of the New York City Police Board, in good-natured banter at his fashion of disciplining his men by going about at night to see for himself what they are doing. In point of fact, there is much in the methods of the Reform Board to suggest the beneficent rule of the mythical Caliph. Mayor Strong's method of solving the most difficult problem with which his administration had to deal points to his possessing the faculty that made King William Emperor of a united Germany-that of choosing his advisers well, which is the very genius of leadership. It would be difficult to get four men together better fitted to do the great work they have to do than Commissioners Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew D. Parker, Avery D. Andrews and Frederick D. Grant. In four short weeks they have succeeded in impressing their purpose on a demoralized force to an extent which the timid citizens who saw the old order of things upset with misgivings must have thought incredible. Practically, their work is done already. What remains to be done is important, but not nearly so much so as the demonstration to the force, and to the citizens, that the thing was possible, that in the struggle between moral force and political 'pull,' the former might win,-must win, however uneven the apparent odds. "This was the issue from the first, and to the demonstration of it the new Board promptly directed its efforts. It found a force, misnamed the Finest, stricken through and through with the dry-rot of politics. The blackmail, brutality, shirking, and all the rest were mere symptoms of the general disorder. The very first act of the Board-viz., to extend civil service rule to the appointments still left open in the department-was at once an answer and a challenge to the politicians who swarmed in Mulberry Street, confident of being able to 'make a line' on the new men and the new order of things. This effort they have not abandoned in the face of many discouragements. 'The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.' It is the nature of Tammany politics that it should not appreciate the quality of moral force. They have nothing in common. ""You will yield too. You are but human,' said the oldest and wariest of the politicians, as he left Mulberry Street, a beaten man. Mr. Roosevelt's answer was to send to the Board his proposition, which it promptly adopted, to close the last avenue of the politician to police patronage. "We want the civil service law applied to appointments here,' he said, in explanation, 'not because it is the ideal way, but because it is the only way you can knock the politicians out, and you have to do that to get anywhere.' "The speech sufficiently described Mr. Roosevelt. It is in keeping with all that has ever been known of him as a public man. Force and courage are his conspicuous characteristics. To the suggestion that the retirement of the old heads of the force might invite ruffianism and disorder, he responded curtly, 'there shall be order;' and there is order. In the Board his restless energy is admirably supplemented by the cool head of Mr. Parker-who with the training of the lawyer combines a keen intelligence and a breadth of view which make the two men, in everything so different, approach their task by different paths, yet in the same spirit—and by the untiring zeal and labors of Major Andrews, the Treasurer, and Colonel Grant. Both of these latter officials possess the genius for and the patience with details, without which effectual reform of so great a body as the police force would be impossible. Already Colonel Grant's overhauling of the Department's supply accounts has disclosed some of the numerous small leaks through which the city's revenues were wasted under a corrupt regime, and has succeeded in stopping them. "That the Board has no cut-and-dried theories of police management, so far from being the hindrance to it which its early critics suggested, has proved instead its strongest point. It had no traditions to break from. 'We have no patent cure-all for the department,' said Mr. Roosevelt, speaking for his colleagues. 'Some things are plain. We want honesty, plain, common honesty, in the force, and politics out of it. For the rest, we are willing to fit our theories to the facts as we make them out.' Already, in pursuance of this plan, drunkards have been made to understand that the police force is no place for them; party managers, that the day of the ignorant, bullying election officer is past. Promotions are made on probation, not for 'influence.' Policemen have been made to resign membership in political clubs. Reward follows as swiftly upon the brave act as punishment on misconduct. The clubber knows that he runs the certain risk of prompt dismissal. And this is the work of one short month. "Mr. Roosevelt's tour de force, as it has been wittily called, had its amusing side, but its purpose was not to amuse. With the practical common sense of the man, he chose for his night patrol through the streets the small hours in the morning, when the demand for a policeman, if it arises at all, is most urgent, and when the temptation to shirk is almost the greatest. As a matter of fact, the way in which posts were patrolled at that hour had long been a scandal. Mr. Roosevelt's trip demonstrated how empty was the boast of superior excellence on which the retired chiefs had been trading. The demoralization was complete. Two policemen in a dozen were attending to business. The rest were loafing, or were not found at all until the President's message summoned them to headquarters later in the morning to hear what he thought of them. New York streets have been better policed every hour since. "One great stumbling block was left in the way of police reform by the failure of the reorganization bill. The Board cannot dismiss a subordinate, of whose inefficiency or dishonesty it may be convinced, without being able to obtain the legal proof. This power must yet be given it before it can complete its work. Meanwhile its demonstration that 'pull' has lost its power altogether in the department must rank with Colonel Waring's declared purpose to 'put a man, not a voter, behind every broom' as among the epoch-making policies, few in number, of American municipal administration." There have been few imitations of the Roosevelt system of dealing with the "problems" that arise in Municipal Government, the one Department which we of Republican America are not proud to have compared with the monarchial municipalities of Europe. The absolutely fearless and impartial way of Roosevelt, the President and master spirit of the Police Commission, gave him a power that had not entered into calculations, and that, with the enlargement of his sphere to include national affairs, promises a progressive good government, that will combine with common justice, public prosperity. There was a day and an hour in Philadelphia during the Republican Convention of 1900, in which a call by conscientious and devoted friends was made upon Theodore Roosevelt to abstain from national politics; and there were two reasons assigned: First, that he was in the mind of the people at large to be some day—and the sooner the better after McKinley's second term—a candidate for President of the United States, and that he should not even consider the candidacy for the Vice-Presidency. Some of Governor Roosevelt's close and constant supporters-Dr. Albert Shaw, of the Review of Reviews, and Seth Low, President of Columbia College, were of them. They had marked with admiration the wonderful changes wrought by the Police Commission, by Roosevelt as President of the Board, under deplorably defective laws, by his personal force and genius for reformation in public affairs of a knotty, crooked and rough nature and wanted him, they insisted, until he was needed for the Presidency, "for home consumption." It was necessary to make clear to Roosevelt that the line of duty before him was not to further serve the City or State of New York, or to be an Assistant Secretary or Lieutenant Colonel; that all that was behind him, and that the recognition of it was by the people that he should go up higher, as indeed he was Governor of the Empire State; and the next chapter of public life should be that which comprehended the security and advancement and expansion of the Nation. Thus far, it was pointed out, there had been a Providence whose shining face beamed over him through the clouds, and the light shone on his Civil Service Reform labors, his Police Commission experiences, his secondary but not subordinate position in the Navy Department, his war record, that had given him education in the only military school better than West Point. In the Police Commission he had been at pains to acquire, without the futile pomp and circumstance of proclamation, the knowledge to act upon to break the Dynastic supremacy of crime protected for revenue, and cause the law to be so far respected as to arouse the people to assert themselves in law making, but it was found impracticable to unite the citizens whose interests and sentiments demanded the law abiding habit of the people, because there was a school of professors of superiority of the self-sufficient, who had abundant aspiration, but were wanting in the faculty of construction, and could not be persuaded to submit their ostentatious but insignificant individualities to the consultation and discipline needful to organization. The triumph of Tammany in Greater New York, was that of a regular political army, over a mass of undrilled militia, incoherent and yet delighted with the conceits of |