Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/281

 *ice examiners. In any event the written examination is apt to do as much harm as good, and for policemen and firemen we came to the conclusion that it was almost wholly worthless, once it had been determined that an applicant could write well enough to turn in an intelligible report. The initial qualification on which we came to rely and to regard as most important was the physical qualification. There is no way to tell by asking a man questions whether he will be a good policeman or not; the only way to find that out is to try him for a year. But his physical condition can be determined, and on this basis we began to build the police force, under the direction of Dr. Peter Donnelly, one of the ablest surgeons in the country, whose tragic early death was seemingly but a part of that fate which took from us in a few short years so many of the best and brightest of the young men in our movement. The death of Peter Donnelly left us desolate because he had a genius for friendship equal to that genius as a surgeon which enabled him to render a great social service.

He was perfectly rigid in the examinations to which he subjected applicants for positions in the department, and wholly inaccessible to any sort of influence in favor of the unfit. In the old days, which by many were regretted as the good old days, the only qualification an applicant needed was a friend on the police board, and as a result the force was encumbered with the lame, the halt, and the blind; there were drinkers if not drunkards among them, and the paunches which some bore before them