The City Club’s criticism did not charge that Partridge was personally corrupt, but that he was weak and gullible and was ignorant of real conditions. “Commissioner Partridge and his deputies adopted the idea of ruling the police force according to military ideas. The word of a superior officer was accepted absolutely as against that of a subordinate. In a force where the superior officers had, for the most part, secured their promotions by bribery; where the superior officers were the beneficiaries of blackmailing; and where the honest men, as a rule, remained subordinates--the attempt to instil a spirit of respect among the men for their superiors excited only ridicule, and added to the prevalent demoralization.…”[1] True as such a general statement was, it has been equally true, as experience has shown, that various other reform police commissioners have vainly tried “to break the system”; temporary figures, commissioners come and go, but “The System” has remained more or less intact. Even General Francis V. Greene, appointed by Mayor Low January 1, 1903, to succeed Colonel Partridge (who resigned the day before the trustees of the City Club’s demand for his resignation was handed in), found this to be a fact, notwithstanding his earnest, conscientious efforts to correct conditions in the police department. The vote of the body of the police force themselves showed, in 1902, their complete dissatisfaction with conditions. At least 75 per cent. of the police force voted for Low in 1901; a year later fully 90 per cent. voted for Bird S. Coler, Tammany’s candidate for Governor.[2]