“Our city, with its great population and vast extent, can hardly be said to have a police,” wrote the editor again in the following February. But immediately after the election of James Harper, the publisher, as Mayor, a force of 200 patrolmen was organized, a number soon increased to 800. When Mayor William V. Brady in 1847 proposed abolishing them and restoring the watch system, the newspaper was amazed. The night watchmen had never arrested any one when it was avoidable, for every arrest meant that the officer lost half of the next day from his usual work testifying at the trial. The watch had never stopped a public disturbance--the abolition and flour riots had destroyed property that would have supported a police force several years; but the police had quelled several incipient outbreaks. The _Evening Post_ was not for abolishing, but for improving the new force. One of the reforms it sought was the clothing of the men in distinctive uniforms. As it explained again and again, a uniformed policeman could be seen from a distance and accosted for information or help; he would be obeyed by rowdies when a policeman out of uniform would lack authority; and he could not loiter in corner groggeries. This salutary improvement was finally effected in the fall of 1853. As for the fire department, New York depended upon the volunteer system from the time the _Evening Post_ was founded until 1865, and at no date after Bryant’s return from Europe in 1836 had his journal any patience with it. There was never any difficulty in making the force large enough; when abolished, it consisted of 125 different hose, engine, and ladder companies. The objection was to its personnel. Gangs of desperate young blackguards, said the _Post_ at the beginning of 1840, assembled nightly near the engine-houses, devoted themselves to ribaldry, drinking, fighting, and buffoonery, and not infrequently were guilty of riots, robbery, and assaults upon women. They levied forced contributions upon storekeepers to buy liquor and pay their fines whenever they were jailed. At conflagrations they carried off whatever movables were spared by the flames. The volunteer system, collecting these ruffians in various capacities, gave them the opportunity to gratify their restless love of excitement, destroyed their fitness for regular employment, and rapidly made them confirmed drunkards. The clanship engendered by the hostility of the different companies led to bloody street fights. What should be done? The _Evening Post_ recommended “the prohibition of the volunteer system by penal enactments”; and if the city could not support a paid force, the abandonment of the field to the insurance companies.