comparison
between the New York Police Department as it is today and as it was
twenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of organization was thoroughly
bad--and the department was at its high-water mark of honest and
effective activity. Now the scheme of organization is excellent--but the
less said about the way it works the better. The answer to the riddle is
this: today the New York police force is headed by Tammany; the name of
the particular Tammany man who is Commissioner does not matter. In those
days the head was Roosevelt.

There were many good men on the force then as now. What Roosevelt
said of the men of his time is as true today: "There are no better men
anywhere than the men of the New York police force; and when they go bad
it is because the system is wrong, and because they are not given the
chance to do the good work they can do and would rather do." The first
fight that Roosevelt found on his hands was to keep politics and every
kind of favoritism absolutely out of the force. During his six years as
Civil Service Commissioner he had learned much about the way to get good
men into the public service. He was now able to put his own theories
into practice. His method was utterly simple and incontestably right.
"As far as was humanly possible, the appointments and promotions were
made without regard to any question except the fitness of the man and
the needs of the service." That was all. "We paid," he said, "not the
slightest attention to a man's politics or creed, or where he was born,
so long as he was an American citizen." But it was not easy to convince
either the politicians or the public that the Commission really meant
what it said. In view of the long record of unblushing corruption in
connection with every activity in the Police Department, and of the
existence, which was a matter of common knowledge, of a regular tariff
for appointments and promotions, it is little wonder that the news that
every one on, or desiring to get on, the force would have a square deal
was received with scepticism. But such was the fact. Roosevelt brought
the whole situation out into the open, gave the widest possible
publicity to what the Commission was doing, and went hotly after any
intimation of corruption.

One secret of his success here as everywhere else was that he did things
himself. He knew things of his own knowledge. One evening he went
down to the Bowery to speak at a branch of the Young Men's Christian
Asso