These men complain chiefly that the political phase of the matter is not more urgently bored into. They say that the conduct of the commissioners for years has been such as to poison a patrolman from the time he first applies for admission to the force. The payment for appointment, the reputation of the politicians in the Board, the uses made of him by his executive superiors in their private schemes, and by the Commissioners, directly and indirectly, for their partisan purposes, together with the general moral tone of the force and the work, all tend to teach him how he is to do for himself when he can. There ... is daily disappointment that the higher evils are not kept in view.

So far as immediate remedial legislation was concerned, the Lexow inquiry produced less effect than had been hoped. Boss Platt controlled the Republican Legislature, and had a strong influence upon Gov. Levi P. Morton, who succeeded Flower; and Platt declared that to put the police under a single Commissioner would be “revolution.” When the Committee made its report in January, 1895, the Evening Post joined with Dr. Parkhurst in ridiculing its recommendations, which included retention of the bipartisan, four-headed Police Commission. Godkin drew a scathing picture of Lexow as he “sneaked off to Platt’s express office, and engaged in a dirty little intrigue for the defeat of the reform movement, and tossed his little head in the air and sniffed at all the leading men in the city, and abused reformers in general, and went to work under Platt’s direction to concoct a few little bills to secure for Platt a few little offices.” The Legislature refused to put the police under a single head. It passed enactments making possible the reformation of the police court bench, and the reorganization of the public school system, but in other fields in which the reformers had expected changes it refused to act.

The real triumph of reform came in the municipal election in 1894. Tammany, trying to brazen out the Lexow revelations, first nominated Nathan Straus, one of the worst Park Commissioners the city ever had, the chief abettor in 1892 of a scheme to ruin Central Park by putting a race-track in it; but he declined, and the nomination was given “Hughie” Grant, who had begun the process of filling the city offices with the criminals and semi-criminals who adorned them. The reform Democrats and reform Republicans held a meeting in Madison Square Garden and selected a Committee of Seventy to conduct their campaign, this body nominating William M. Strong for Mayor and John W. Goff for Recorder. Its choice struck the Evening Post as admirable, not only because Strong was a man of high character, a successful citizen, and well known to the public, but because he was a Republican. The next Governor and Legislature, wrote Godkin, with accurate anticipation of the fact, would be Republican, and while a Republican administration in New York city might not be able to get from Gov. Morton and Boss Platt all that was desired, they would certainly get more than any Democrat. “A Democratic Mayor would probably not be allowed to make a single removal or appointment except such as came to him under the present Charter, and we should continue to wallow in our present quagmire until the next Presidential election, and then might well bid farewell to all thought of city reform.” Decent citizens this time were fully aroused. They went to the polls in such numbers that, although Tammany mustered 108,000 votes, Strong and Goff had a majority of over 45,000. It was an impressive demonstration, wrote Mr. Godkin, of the power of non-partisanship:

The Committee of Seventy have shown, more conspicuously than ever before, the power which, even in this city of many nationalities and creeds, lies in the union of good people. We believe the Good Government clubs are doing invaluable work in turning the lesson to account. They are spreading the non-partisan (not bi-partisan) view of city affairs. It is especially important that they should hammer it into the brains of the young, for the men who have conducted this campaign against Tammany will be gone from the stage in twenty years, as the men of 1871 are now, and in about twenty years Tammany regains its old strength. Tammany will surely come again, unless young and old get into the way of looking at the city as they look at their bank, and think no more about the Mayor’s politics than they think about the politics of the cashier who keeps their accounts. All the well-governed cities of the world are governed on this business plan, all the badly governed on the other.

The plan of going down among the rank and file of Tammany with books and pamphlets, and University Settlements, and popular lectures, we know has merit. It is a work of humanity and civilization which is always in order. But they deceive themselves who think the city can be saved by any such missionary work. What Tammany offers to the ignorant and poor is always something more palpable and succulent than enlightenment, or free reading rooms, or cheap coffee. It can never be met and vanquished except by union among the honest, industrious, and intelligent. These are now in a majority and have always been in a majority. A great commercial city like New York could not exist and prosper if they were not in a majority. Whenever they cease to be in a majority, capital and labor will both begin to move away from Manhattan Island.

The splendid achievements of Mayor Strong’s reform administration need not be rehearsed in detail. Col. George E. Waring was appointed head of the Street Cleaning Department, and before he had been at work a fortnight the Evening Post commented on the change he had wrought. When people saw gangs of able-bodied sweepers and shovelers working like Trojans under bosses, instead of groups of infirm and decrepit creatures leaning upon their implements and talking politics, they rubbed their eyes. Snow actually vanished over night; trucks were no longer stabled in the streets to shelter vice; and the accidents to horses from nails and rubbish strikingly diminished. Waring’s most competent predecessor had cleaned 53 miles of street daily in 1888, whereas Waring cleaned 433 miles from once to five times daily. Theodore Roosevelt was made President of the Police Commission, with results familiar to every one. A new Board of Education, after failing to procure President Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, chose William H. Maxwell to be the energetic Superintendent of the Schools; while in Mayor Strong’s first year fourteen new school buildings were finished, and the salaries of teachers were materially raised. The police courts were reorganized, the Mayor taking pains to choose the best magistrates available. The City College, cramped into small quarters on Twenty-third Street, was given an adequate site on the heights overlooking Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum was enlarged, bridges were built over the Harlem, and the parks were much more carefully tended. The administration made blunders, but it was one of the best New York has ever had.

For this great revolt of 1894 and its fruits, Mr. Godkin gave equal credit to the foolish audacity of the Tammany yahoos and “the persistence and pluck with which Dr. Parkhurst stuck to the police. It was his splendid bulldog obstinacy in holding on to them which really made the first clear impression on the public mind.” Dr. Parkhurst will always remain the hero of the uprising. But many who were foremost in the struggle thought at the time that Godkin himself should be bracketed with the fighting pastor, and publicly or privately said so. Dr. Parkhurst just after the election expressed his warm gratitude to the editor. This was all very well, wrote Col. George E. Waring; “but Parkhurst don’t know, as do those who have watched your course during all the years of your work here, to what an extent you alone are to be credited with the maintaining, among the leaders of the community, of the spirit which at last made Parkhurst and his work possible. I have known in my short life no equal example of persistent, vigorous, aggressive virtue receiving the reward of such crowning success.” Frederick Keppel wrote in the same terms: “Both Dr. Parkhurst and Mr. Goff deserve the public honors that have been heaped upon them; but long before these gentlemen were ever publicly heard of (and unfalteringly ever since) your journal has fought against corruption and wrong with a power and vigor which certainly has done more than any other single influence to bring about the magnificent result of last election day.” Wayne MacVeagh and President Gilman expressed themselves with equal enthusiasm. Dr. W. R. Huntington suggested statues to Dr. Parkhurst and Mr. Godkin overlooking Tammany Hall.

The strength of this sentiment led a month after the election to the presentation to Mr. Godkin of a loving cup, the speech on the occasion being delivered by Bishop Henry C. Potter. The subscription was made by a list of women, and the cup testified to their “grateful recognition of fearless and unfaltering services to the city of New York.”

The two chief municipal issues in which Godkin was interested after 1894, the creation of Greater New York under a charter drafted in 1896, and the election of its first Mayor in 1897, both resulted in defeats for his views. He opposed consolidation as premature. His belief was that if the separate governments of New York and Brooklyn were both corrupt, as they had been with few intermissions for a long generation, their union would simply present a harder problem for reformers, and fatter jobs and more boodle for the bosses. Moreover, he knew that the guiding hand in the formation of a Charter Commission and the legislative approval of its work would be Platt’s. But the Platt and Croker machines agreed in supporting the consolidation programme, and many of the reform element stood behind it, so that it was easily made effective. The result of the ensuing mayoralty campaign of 1897 was not long in doubt. On the Tammany side there was one candidate, Robert Van Wyck, and opposing him there appeared three. The Citizens’ Union was formed that spring, and its efforts led to the nomination of Seth Low, well known as successively Mayor of Brooklyn and President of Columbia University—an admirable choice; the Platt Republicans nominated Gen. B. F. Tracy; and the Bryan Democrats put forward Henry George. Van Wyck received 233,997 votes, while Low, his nearest rival, obtained only 151,540.

E. L. Godkin