Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| and corruption by the Tammany Hall officials and notably by the Police Department, was as appalling as he had insisted. In the fall of 1894, the decent men of the city joined together, and nominated a union ticket, with, at its head, as candidate for mayor, William A. Strong, a Republican. Helped by the general Republican tidalwave, which in the State secured the defeat of Senator Hill for governor by one hundred and fifty thousand plurality, Strong and the rest of the ticket were elected in New York City, the Tammany ticket being defeated by a sweeping majority. |
| There followed a complete revolution in the municipal government. The victory had been won, not on party lines, but as a fight for decent government, and for the non-partisan administration of municipal affairs. Democrat and Republican, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, the man born of native American stock and the man whose parents came from Ireland or Germany, all had joined in achieving the victory. The change in the city departments was radical. It was not so much a change in policy as a change of administration. It is rather humiliating for a New Yorker to have to confess that this revolutionary change consisted simply in applying the standard of common decency and common honesty to our public affairs. Under the old |