After six years' service in the Civil Service Commission Roosevelt left Washington to accept the position of president of the Board of Police Commissioners of the city of New York, which had been offered to him by Mayor Strong. It is speaking within bounds to say that the history of the police force of New York has been a checkered one in which the black squares have tended to predominate. The task which Roosevelt confronted was then, as always, difficult, and the machinery of four commissioners and a practically irremovable chief made action extremely slow and uncertain. Roosevelt set himself to expel politics and favoritism in appointments and promotions and to crush corruption everywhere. In some way he drove through the obstacles and effected great improvements, although permanent betterment was perhaps impossible. Good men were appointed and meritorious men promoted as never before, while the corrupt and dangerous officers were punished in a number of instances sufficient, at least, to check and discourage evildoers. Discipline was improved, and the force became very loyal to the chief commissioner, because they learned to realize that he was fighting for right and justice without fear or favor. The results were also shown in the marked decrease of crime, which judges pointed out from the bench. Then, too, it was to be observed that a New York police commissioner suddenly attracted the attention of the country. The work which was being done by Roosevelt in New York, his midnight walks through the worst quarters of the great city, to see whether the guardians of the peace did their duty, which made the newspapers compare him to Haroun Al Raschid, all appealed to the popular imagination. A purely local office became national in his hands, and his picture appeared in the shops of European cities. There was something more than vigor and picturesqueness necessary to explain these phenomena. The truth is that Roosevelt was really laboring through a welter of details to carry out certain general principles which went to the very roots of society and government. He wished the municipal administration to be something far greater than a business man's administration, which was the demand that had triumphed at the polls. He wanted to make it an administration of the workingmen, of the dwellers in the tenements, of the poverty and suffering which haunted the back streets and hidden purlieus of the huge city. The people did not formulate these purposes as they watched what he was doing, but they felt them and understood them by that instinct which is often so keen in vast bodies of men. The man who was toiling in the seeming obscurity of the New York police commission again became very distinct to his fellow countrymen and deepened their consciousness of his existence and their comprehension of his purposes and aspirations.