The result of our labors was of value to the city, for we gave the citizens better protection than they had ever before received, and at the same time cut out the corruption which was eating away civic morality. We showed conclusively that it was possible to combine both honesty and efficiency in handling the police. We were attacked with the most bitter animosity by every sensational newspaper and every politician of the baser sort, not because of our shortcomings, but because of what we did that was good. We enforced the laws as they were on the statute books, we broke up blackmail, we kept down the spirit of disorder, and repressed rascality, and we administered the force with an eye single to the welfare of the city. In doing this we encountered, as we had expected, the venemous opposition of all men whose interest it was that corruption should continue, or who were of such dull morality that they were not willing to see honesty triumph at the cost of strife. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [14] _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1897. [15] My predecessor in the Presidency of the Police Board. [16] The italics are my own. [Illustration] IX THE VICE-PRESIDENCY AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896[17] The Vice-President is an officer unique in his character and functions, or to speak more properly, in his want of functions while he remains Vice-President, and in his possibility of at any moment ceasing to be a functionless official and becoming the head of the whole nation. There is no corresponding position in any constitutional government. Perhaps the nearest analogue is the heir apparent in a monarchy. Neither the French President nor the British Prime Minister has a substitute, ready at any moment to take his place, but exercising scarcely any authority until his place is taken. The history of such an office is interesting, and the personality of the incumbent for the time being may at any moment become of vast importance. The founders of our government--the men who did far more than draw up the Declaration of Independence, for they put forth the National Constitution--in many respects builded very wisely of set purpose. In some cases they built wiser than they knew. In yet other instances they failed entirely to achieve objects for which they had endeavored to provide by a most elaborate and ingenious governmental arrangement. They distrusted what would now be called pure Democracy, and they dreaded what we would now call party government.