Therefore, as I viewed it, there were two sides to the work:  first, the actual handling of the Police Department; second, using my position to help in making the city a better place in which to live and work for those to whom the conditions of life and labor were hardest.  The two problems were closely connected; for one thing never to be forgotten in striving to better the conditions of the New York police force is the connection between the standard of morals and behavior in that force and the general standard of morals and behavior in the city at large.  The form of government of the Police Department at that time was such as to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results.  It represented that device of old-school American political thought, the desire to establish checks and balances so elaborate that no man shall have power enough to do anything very bad.  In practice this always means that no man has power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad is done anyhow.

In most positions the “division of powers” theory works unmitigated mischief.  The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the wrong kind of man.  What is normally needed is the concentration in the hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample power to enable him or them to do the work that is necessary; and then the devising of means to hold these men fully responsible for the exercise of that power by the people.  This of course means that, if the people are willing to see power misused, it will be misused.  But it also means that if, as we hold, the people are fit for self-government—­if, in other words, our talk and our institutions are not shams—­we will get good government.  I do not contend that my theory will automatically bring good government.  I do contend that it will enable us to get as good government as we deserve, and that the other way will not.

The then government of the Police Department was so devised as to render it most difficult to accomplish anything good, while the field for intrigue and conspiracy was limitless.  There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong to one party and two to the other, although, as a matter of fact, they never divided on party lines.  There was a Chief, appointed by the Commissioners, but whom they could not remove without a regular trial subject to review by the courts of law.  This Chief and any one Commissioner had power to hold up most of the acts of the other three Commissioners.  It was made easy for the four Commissioners to come to a deadlock among themselves; and if this danger was avoided, it was easy for one Commissioner, by intriguing with the Chief, to bring the other three to a standstill.  The Commissioners were appointed by the Mayor, but he could not remove them without the assent of the Governor, who was usually politically opposed to him.  In the same way the Commissioners could appoint the patrolmen, but they could not remove them, save after a trial which went up for review to the courts.