Roosevelt did not stop all the crime, of course, nor leave
the city spotless when he ended his two years service. But he did
make it possible for one of his chief opponents, one of the
severest of all critics, Mr. Godkin, a newspaper editor, to write
him, at the end of his term of office:
"In New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American
to-day is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the country
the spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of
high character in the most efficient way amid a thousand
difficulties. As a lesson in politics, I cannot think of anything
more instructive." [Footnote: Thayer, "Theodore Roosevelt," p.
106.]
How did he do this? First, he tried to keep politics out of the
police-force,--to appoint men because they would make good
officers, not because they were Republicans or Democrats. Next, he
tried to reward and promote policemen who had proved themselves
brave,--who had saved people in burning houses or from drowning,
or had arrested violent men at great danger to themselves. This is
commonly done in the New York Police Department to-day: it was not
so common before 1895. Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners
found one old policeman who had saved twenty-five people from
drowning and two or three from burning buildings. They gave him
his first promotion. He began to have the Department pay for a
policeman's uniform when it was torn in making an arrest or
otherwise ruined in the performance of duty.
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