And then came the summers when, for the sake of the children, extra exertions were made to keep the streets clean. Slowly the truth dawned on the dullest mother that the babies were not dying in such numbers; were not so ill, because the streets were clean, the garbage collected and the streets washed and cool. Twenty years of Colonel Waring, and the moral tone of the most ignorant would be changed. For the right to earn his living honestly, honorably, to cast his ballot as an American citizen, would be guaranteed to every voter employed in a city department employing the greatest number of voters with the least manual ability, the least education. A city is just as honest as the greatest number of citizens casting a ballot with the least knowledge of its value and effect; it comes no higher in the scale of integrity than that. Every man who stands behind a broom because he earns what is paid him, and knows that he stays there just as long as he continues to earn his wages, represents a wealth of manhood in a democracy, a part of the nation's capital as a world power. When Colonel Waring discharged the first man convicted of accepting a bribe for collecting the refuse of the city contrary to the law of the department, he gave a practical demonstration of the truth of the Declaration of Independence that all men are born free and equal. He showed by that act that the poor man who could not pay a bribe was protected by the law; that wealth purchased no privileges at the expense of the city. Just where the spoils system had worked its deepest degradation it received its most effective lesson. The greatest benefit that Colonel Waring, that man of law and order, conferred upon New York, was not its clean streets, but the moral lesson that a city department can be administered to secure the best interests of the people on the principles that control the best business houses of the city. To the shame of the city be it said that it had so long been accustomed to the spoils system that it could not accept the theory of Colonel Waring. It was impossible for even the philanthropic workers to believe that a man would not be placed, if they used their personal "pull" with the head of the department. The politicians learned quickly that the system in that department ignored "pull." When they did accept it, they determined to overthrow the man who robbed the spoils system of its largest perquisite where it was most effective in numbers. The combination of the political machines accomplished the city's disgrace in 1897. It was redeemed in 1901 by a people who had suffered cruelly; who saw in the four years of misrule that they had made their own chains of bondage. CHAPTER III. THE HOMES UNDER ONE ROOF.