Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/277

 unruly and the lawless be kept in check when they no longer beheld this insignia of authority in the hands of the guardians of the peace? And perhaps to reassure the righteous and truly good Jones gave the policemen canes and ran the great risk of making them ridiculous.

I am not sure that he would have cared much if he had, since he had so little respect for the police idea, and of course he had as little regard for organization. I remember once that at a session of the old police board he opposed the creation of new sergeants; he said a sergeant always seemed as superfluous to him as a presiding elder in the Methodist Church. With an elected board of police commissioners over it the police force was pretty certain to be demoralized, of course, as is any executive department of government which is directed by a board, for with a board, unless all the members save one are either dead or incapacitated, discipline and efficiency are impossible. We got rid of the board system in Ohio after two or three sessions of the legislature had been wrestled with, and though the "mayor's code" was never enacted, many of its ideas were adopted in amendments to the municipal code, so that we approached the most efficient form of city government yet devised in our rather close resemblance to the federal plan.

The time came, however, when the old elected board of public service was succeeded by a director of public service appointed by the mayor, and the old board of public safety by a director of public safety appointed by the same authority, though that