Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| A DOZEN years had wrought their changes since Roosevelt took his legislative committee down from Albany to investigate the Police Department of New York City. The only change they had brought to Mulberry Street 1 was that of aggravating a hundredfold the evils which had then attracted attention. He had put an unerring finger upon politics as the curse that was eating out the heart of the force once called the finest in the world. The diagnosis was correct; but the prescription written out by the spoilsmen was more politics and ever more politics; and the treatment was about as bad as could have been devised. With the police become an avowedly political body with a bi-partisan |