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IX.

At the Annual Parade

HE tendency to ascribe former defects of the Department of Street Cleaning in New York city to one political party, as such, seems to me not to be fair. I had this prevailing tendency myself when I first took office, but experience has taught me that it was a question not of party, but of politics. I have no reason now to suppose that matters would have been in any wise better had the other party been in control of the city government. Whatever may be the differences of their members in avocation or in attainments, when it is a question of the government of the city, by the spoilsmen, for the party, there is nothing to choose between political organizations.

I am, to this extent, no more an anti-Tammany man than I should be an anti-Republican man, if Republicans had brought about the same defects, had their party been in power. In describing the former condition of the streets and of the Department, I am making no criticism of Tammany Hall—only of politics as the ruling factor in city government. The improved present condition could not have been brought about without an absolute disregard of all political considerations in }