far surpassed anything it had received until his time. Indeed, it
is probably not unfair to say that it has received no greater
impulse since.



CHAPTER IV. HAROUN AL ROOSEVELT

In 1895, at the age of thirty-six, Roosevelt was asked by Mayor
Strong of New York City, who had just been elected on an
anti-Tammany ticket, to become a member of his Administration.
Mayor Strong wanted him for Street Cleaning Commissioner.
Roosevelt definitely refused that office, on the ground that he
had no special fitness for it, but accepted readily the Mayor's
subsequent proposal that he should become President of the Police
Commission, knowing that there was a job that he could do.

There was plenty of work to be done in the Police Department. The
conditions under which it must be done were dishearteningly
unfavorable. In the first place, the whole scheme of things was
wrong. The Police Department was governed by one of those
bi-partisan commissions which well-meaning theorists are wont
sometimes to set up when they think that the important thing in
government is to have things arranged so that nobody can do
anything harmful. The result often is that nobody can do anything
at all. There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong to
one party and two to the other. There was also a Chief of Police,
appointed by the Commission, who could not be removed without a
trial subject to review by the courts. The scheme put a premium
on intriguing and obstruction. It was far inferior to the present