VIII
ADMINISTERING THE NEW YORK POLICE FORCE[14]

In New York, in the fall of 1894, Tammany Hall was overthrown by a coalition composed partly of the regular republicans, partly of anti-Tammany democrats, and partly of independents. Under the latter head must be included a great many men who in national politics habitually act with one or the other of the two great parties, but who feel that in municipal politics good citizens should act independently. The tidal wave, which was running high against the democratic party, was undoubtedly very influential in bringing about the anti-Tammany victory; but the chief factor in producing the result was the wide-spread anger and disgust felt by decent citizens at the corruption which, under the sway of Tammany, had honey-combed every department of the city government, but especially the police force. A few well-meaning people have at times tried to show that this corruption was not really so very great. In reality it would be difficult to overestimate the utter rottenness of many branches of the city administration. There were a few honorable and high-minded Tammany officials, and there were a few bureaus which were administered with more or less efficiency, although dishonestly. But the corruption had become so wide-spread as seriously to impair the work of administration, and to bring us back within measurable distance of the days of Tweed.

The chief centre of corruption was the Police Department. No man not intimately acquainted with both the lower and humbler sides of New York life—for there is a wide distinction between the two—can realize how far this corruption extended. Except in rare instances, where prominent politicians made demands which could not be refused, both promotions and appointments towards the close of Tammany rule were made almost solely for money, and the prices were discussed with cynical frankness. There was a well-recognized tariff of charges, ranging from two or three hundred dollars for appointment as a patrolman, to twelve or fifteen thousand dollars for promotion to the position of captain. The money was reimbursed to those who paid it by an elaborate system of blackmail. This was chiefly carried on at the expense of gamblers, liquor sellers, and keepers of disorderly houses; but every form of vice and crime contributed more or less, and a great many respectable people who were ignorant or timid were blackmailed under pretence of forbidding or allowing them to violate obscure ordinances and the like. From top to bottom the New York police force was utterly demoralized by the gangrene of such a system, where venality and blackmail went hand in hand with the basest forms of low ward politics, and where the policeman, the ward politician, the liquor seller, and the criminal alternately preyed on one another and helped one another to prey on the general public.

In May, 1895, I was made president of the newly appointed police board, whose duty it was to cut out the chief source of civic corruption in New York by cleansing the police department. The police board consisted of four members. All four of the new men were appointed by Mayor Strong, the reform Mayor, who had taken office in January.

With me, was associated, as treasurer of the Board, Mr. Avery D. Andrews. He was a democrat and I a republican, and there were questions of national politics on which we disagreed widely; but such questions could not enter into the administration of the New York police, if that administration was to be both honest and efficient; and as a matter of fact, during my two years’ service, Mr. Andrews and I worked in absolute harmony on every important question of policy which arose. The prevention of blackmail and corruption, the repression of crime and violence, safeguarding of life and property, securing honest elections, and rewarding efficient and punishing inefficient police service, are not, and cannot properly be made, questions of party difference. In other words, such a body as the police force of New York can be wisely and properly administered only upon a non-partisan basis, and both Mr. Andrews and myself were quite incapable of managing it on any other. There were many men who helped us in our work; and among them all, the man who helped us most, by advice and counsel, by stalwart, loyal friendship, and by ardent championship of all that was good against all that was evil, was Jacob A. Riis, the author of How the Other Half Lives.

Certain of the difficulties we had to face were merely those which confronted the entire reform administration in its management of the municipality. Many worthy people expected that this reform administration would work an absolute revolution, not merely in the government, but in the minds of the citizens as a whole; and felt vaguely that they had been cheated because there was not an immediate cleansing of every bad influence in civic or social life. Moreover, the different bodies forming the victorious coalition felt the pressure of conflicting interests and hopes. The mass of effective strength was given by the republican organization, and not only all the enrolled party workers, but a great number of well-meaning republicans who had no personal interest at stake, expected the administration to be used to further the fortunes of their own party. Another great body of the administration’s supporters took a diametrically opposite view, and believed that the administration should be administered without the least reference whatever to party. In theory they were quite right, and I cordially sympathized with them; but as a matter of fact the victory could not have been won by the votes of this class of people alone, and it was out of the question to put these theories into complete effect. Like all other men who actually try to do things instead of confining themselves to saying how they should be done, the members of the new city government were obliged to face the facts and to do the best they could in the effort to get some kind of good result out of the conflicting forces. They had to disregard party so far as was possible; and yet they could not afford to disregard all party connections so utterly as to bring the whole administration to grief.

In addition to these two large groups of supporters of the administration, there were other groups, also possessing influence who expected to receive recognition distinctly as democrats, but as anti-Tammany democrats; and such members of any victorious coalition are always sure to overestimate their own services, and to feel ill-treated.

It is of course an easy thing to show on paper that the municipal administration should have been administered without the slightest reference to national party lines, and if the bulk of the people saw things with entire clearness the truth would seem so obvious as to need no demonstration. But as a matter of fact the bulk of the people who voted the new administration into power neither saw this nor realized it, and in politics, as in life generally, conditions must be faced as they are, and not as they ought to be. The regular democratic organization, not only in the city but in the State, was completely under the dominion of Tammany Hall and its allies, and they fought us at every step with wholly unscrupulous hatred. In the State and the city alike the democratic campaign was waged against the reform administration in New York. The Tammany officials who were still left in power in the city, headed by the comptroller, Mr. Fitch, did everything in their power to prevent the efficient administration of the government. The democratic members of the Legislature acted as their faithful allies in all such efforts. Whatever was accomplished by the reform administration—and a very great deal was accomplished—was due to the action of the republican majority in the constitutional convention, and especially to the republican Governor, Mr. Morton, and the republican majority in the Legislature, who enacted laws giving to the newly chosen Mayor, Mr. Strong, the great powers necessary for properly administering his office. Without these laws the Mayor would have been very nearly powerless. He certainly could not have done a tenth part of what actually was done.

Now, of course, the republican politicians who gave Mayor Strong all these powers, in the teeth of violent democratic opposition to every law for the betterment of civic conditions in New York, ought not, under ideal conditions, to have expected the slightest reward. They should have been contented with showing the public that their only purpose was to serve the public, and that the republican party wished no better reward than the consciousness of having done its duty by the State and the city. But as a whole they had not reached such a standard. There were some who had reached it; there were others who, though perfectly honest, and wishing to see good government prosper, yet felt that somehow it ought to be combined with party advantage of a tangible sort; and finally, there were yet others who were not honest at all and cared nothing for the victory unless it resulted in some way to their own personal advantage. In short, the problem presented was of the kind which usually is presented when dealing with men as a mass. The Mayor and his administration had to keep in touch with the republican party or they could have accomplished nothing; and on the other hand there was much that the republican machine asked which they could not do, because a surrender on certain vital points meant the abandonment of the effort to obtain good administration.