Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/770

750 at these hearings that it is hardly possible to draw a contract that will secure clean streets without giving entire and unquestionable power to the city authorities to revoke and cancel the same at pleasure, and that with such a condition no responsible contractor would undertake the work and invest the large amount of money necessary for its performance. The importunity of the Board of Health, and its dissatisfaction with the condition of the streets, finally led to a sale of the street-cleaning contract to the Hon. James R. Whiting, a prominent leader in all movements for municipal reform at that period. Great hopes and expectations were entertained by all good citizens that New York would soon rejoice in clean streets, but they were doomed to disappointment, for no permanent improvement was visible. The opinion of all interested, officially or otherwise, was quite unanimous at last that street-cleaning by contract was a hopeless failure; and there was a general approval of the act of the Legislature of 1872, imposing temporarily upon the Police Department the duty of cleaning the streets and removing the ashes and garbage of the city.

The reasons for permanently conferring this power and duty upon the Police Department in the new city charter of 1873 were, first, that the commission was non-partisan, the two political parties being equally represented; and, second, that the department would strictly enforce the laws of the city and sanitary ordinances in respect to' the streets and the care and disposal of ashes and garbage, and thereby remove an alleged cause of the failure of street-cleaning by contract. Although the Police Board was in one sense non-partisan, it soon appeared that both parties were clamoring for appointments and political patronage under the Bureau of Street-cleaning with a power and persistence almost irresistible and not always resisted. Nor was there any considerable improvement in the enforcement of the laws and sanitary ordinances in respect to the streets and the care and removal of ashes and garbage. The police force of New York, in physique, intelligence, and bravery, in the detection and prevention of crime, and in the protection of life and property, is certainly equal to any in the world; but for a proper and thorough enforcement of ordinances and regulations, trifling in detail but important in the aggregate, which concern and are necessary to the comfort of the people, it has never been distinguished. The streets of New York under the police régime were certainly as clean, and the removal of the ashes and garbage as well done, as at any previous or subsequent period, and at less expense; but the department did not satisfy the 'public or the press. A change was earnestly and imperatively demanded, and in 1881 the Legislature created a Department of Street-cleaning with a single head