ff for appointments
and promotions. Many powerful politicians and many corrupt outsiders
believed that in some way or other it would still be possible to secure
appointments by corrupt and improper methods, and many good citizens
felt the same conviction. I endeavored to remove the impression from the
minds of both sets of people by giving the widest publicity to what we
were doing and how we were doing it, by making the whole process open
and aboveboard, and by making it evident that we would probe to the
bottom every charge of corruption.

For instance, I received visits at one time from a Catholic priest, and
at another time from a Methodist clergyman, who had parishioners who
wished to enter the police force, but who did not believe they could
get in save by the payment of money or through political pressure. The
priest was running a temperance lyceum in connection with his church,
and he wished to know if there would be a chance for some of the young
men who belonged to that lyceum. The Methodist clergyman came from a
little patch of old native America which by a recent extension had been
taken within the limits of the huge, polyglot, pleasure-loving city. His
was a small church, most of the members being shipwrights, mechanics,
and sailormen from the local coasters. In each case I assured my visitor
that we wanted on the force men of the exact type which he said he could
furnish. I also told him that I was as anxious as he was to find out
if there was any improper work being done in connection with the
examinations, and that I would like him to get four or five of his men
to take the examinations without letting me know their names. Then,
whether the men failed or succeeded, he and I would take their papers
and follow them through every stage so that we could tell at once
whether they had been either improperly favored or improperly
discriminated against. This was accordingly done, and in each case my
visitor turned up a few weeks later, his face wreathed in smiles, to
say that his candidates had passed and that everything was evidently all
straight. During my two years as President of the Commission I think
I appointed a dozen or fifteen members of that little Methodist
congregation, and certainly twice that number of men from the temperance
lyceum of the Catholic church in question. They were all men of the
very type I most wished to see on the force--men of strong physique and
resolute temper, sober, self-respe