plan of a single Commissioner with full power, subject only to
the Mayor who appoints him.

But there is an interesting lesson to be learned from a
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