Much less was accomplished on the Park last year than you had intended and the cost of what was accomplished was much in excess of your estimates.

The park as hitherto designed can not be completed, at the rate of the cost of what was done last year, within the amount to which the expenditure of your Board has been limited.

After being convinced of what I have now announced to you, in January last, I presented my resignation of the office of Superintendent. The President and a majority of the Board and of the Executive Committee having been informed of the circumstances, which led me to do so, at the request of the President and a majority of the Executive Committee, I subsequently withdrew my resignation. I state this here that it may be seen, why I have not sooner brought a matter of so much gravity before the Board. The only accounts in detail which could be had as a basis for calculating, were so meagre and untrustworthy that a clear and definite exhibition of the state of the work, and of the specific items in which the estimates had been exceeded, could not be given. Until a more thorough analysis could be made, it was not thought best to occupy the Board with matters the discussion of which there appeared no reason to believe would serve any good purpose.

After much labor I find it still quite impracticable to prepare a statement in detail of the cost of the work of last year. The reason is simply that no specific account of the expenditure of labor upon different parts of the work has been kept, except upon the Transverse roads, beyond the rough record which almost from the beginning of the work I have required each foreman to give me in the form of a daily report. Many of the foremen are ignorant, some of the best can barely write and are quite unable to make any but the simplest entries. These reports therefore are too indefinite and untrustworthy to furnish a proper basis for accurate calculations. Owing to the want of all other provision for a record of cost, and to the insufficient means of superintendence in general, it is not now practicable to draw up an accurate statement of account between the different parts of the work. Nor can the general conclusions of two months’ study of such data as exist, be presented in a useful form to the Board—except as they bear upon a few broad questions of policy.

A few such conclusions I shall now offer.

To complete the park in all respects as has hitherto been intended, with as good workmanship as has hitherto been secured, at the rates of cost of last year, and with a safely liberal estimate on work and materials of kinds not hitherto [335] largely used, would cost more than the sum which the Commission is pledged not to exceed, by 32 per cent.

It is practicable to vary the plan as it has formed itself in the minds of the designers, in particulars to which the Commission has not yet given definite attention, in such a way that without mutilating it, or essentially changing it, the estimate of cost may be reduced from what it should be for the design and as hitherto entertained and estimated upon. It is also practicable to adopt in the Upper Park a ruder workmanship and cheaper method of construction in some particulars.

At the beginning of operations on the Park, I expressed the opinion that the required work could be done cheaper by the direct employment of the workmen under the Superintendent than by the contract system. Influenced in some measure by my judgment, as the given records show, the Board directed me to employ the necessary force directly, and has hitherto resorted to the contract-system only as an exception. I think it due to myself to now say that I do not consider that a fair trial of the system of labor which I had intended to approve as the alternative of the contract system has ever been had on the park, and I protest against being held as approving and recommending it. If the Board holds me to have been responsible for the economy of the work of the park, and is justified in doing so, then I have been culpably neglectful of my duty in that I have allowed myself to be constrained to constantly employ incompetent and inefficient men. Not grossly and totally incompetent and inefficient men, but men whom I should not have employed if I had been required to employ only the most competent and efficient men whom I could procure. Not one man in ten of all employees on the work has, in my opinion, obtained employment there because he was competent and efficient, and for no other reason. The Commission has the credit of conducting its work free from the vice of politics. The Park is not made to administer to the strength of any political party, but men and officers are and have been from the beginning employed on the park from considerations not of economy and efficiency, but of policy, just as truly as in the Custom House or the City Hall, and the Park has never been free, but has been constantly cursed and disgraced with the vice of politics. It is so now and it will probably continue to be. I have no reason to think that there is one member of the Board who does not believe this to be necessary: no member of the Board has evinced a desire that it should be otherwise.

For myself, after a close observation during four years of the working of this political system, I am satisfied that, looked upon merely as a policy, it is a bad policy, the purposes intended to be accomplished by it being on an average as much set back as advanced by every appointment that is made. What is a favor to one man brings about a cause of offense by preventing the appointment desired by another; a bad man is appointed as a favor, and his subsequent necessary discharge, his malice and false reports, do more harm than his appointment did good, simply with reference to the friendship of those intended to [336] be conciliated. I am speaking now of the matter without any regard to economy, but simply to policy as ordinarily considered in the advice I receive as to the employment of officers and men. I repeat that I believe that no purpose of the Commission is served by it in the average of all cases. I may not be competent to properly judge of the matter, and I do not ask that my opinion should outweigh that of any Commissioner, but I think it proper in discussing the general policy of the Board to distinctly express it. It has not been formed carelessly, or without a certain amount of familiarity with all the circumstances of the case.

As to the additional cost of the work caused in this way, it is difficult to form anything like an exact estimate. It is not by any means limited to the difference in the direct value of the men employed and of those who might be employed at the same wages; it is the indirect influence of the system which costs the most, the discouragement to personal exertion, the demoralization which comes from it, and which unconsciously affects every man on the work from myself to the water-boys. I acknowledge myself affected by it, and I do not believe there is an officer on the park who would answer upon his honor that he had not at times reserved the expenditure of his best powers for the park from the reflection that appointments, promotions and discharges were made from other considerations than they are upon works conducted purely upon commercial principles. If this is the case with the superior officers, it is ten fold more so with the foremen, policemen and working men. It is the opinion of those whose long experience on other works, as well as our own, gives reason for respecting their judgment, that the vice of politics in the form in which it exists on the park costs the public $200,000 of every million expended. I have no reason to believe, and I do not believe, that this is an exaggerated estimate. If the Commission could unanimously determine and persist in the determination that the work should be conducted absolutely upon the principles which would govern an honest and humane contractor in the management of a similar work, it is my deliberate conviction, after much reflection, that this amount would be saved, that in the end, trouble and annoyance would be saved, and that any purpose of the Commission would be better accomplished than by any other course.

I should like to have the work fairly placed in my hands, with the same liberty to secure efficiency in its management which is possessed by those who directly manage the greater part of this city’s expenditure for work. I believe that it is possible to secure as cheap work for the Commission as these contractors secure for themselves, and to save their profits. I should like to fairly try this, but I have been too often told that I did not understand or did not adequately appreciate the necessities of the Commission to expect this, and I do not ask it. I do ask however, that this question and the questions which should follow it may be once more thoroughly considered by the Board, and if it is thought impracticable to secure a very decided change in the direction that I have indicated, that I may be definitely relieved of the responsibility of the superintendence of the work of construction. What I have now said, I have said to no member of the Board [337] before, nor have I advised with any Commissioner before presenting it to the Board. It is no more than I believe to have been required of one by my duty as the servant of the whole Board, and of that which the Board represents.

This matter is one which interests my personal feelings, and I have desired to urge my request in a more definite form, but I would not venture to do so without acquitting myself of the responsibility of overstepping the proper limits of my duty. For this reason I advised with the President, as he yesterday stated, and it is with his approval that I ask the Board to appoint a special Committee with instructions to report, at a future meeting, to be called for the purpose of considering their report on the general feasibility of the plan of operations now had in view by the superintendent and especially upon the following points:

1st. Whether any, and if any, what, modifications or additions to the plan, or omissions from it, are at this time desirable to be made by the Commission.

2d. Whether the alterations in the method of construction referred to in the report of the Superintendent should be forbidden.

3d. Whether it is practicable to conduct the work hereafter, especially with respect to the employment of officers, foremen and men, with simple and direct regard to its economy, and with no more consideration for the wishes of those not employed on it than is usually to be expected of an honest and humane contractor under a commercial operation.

4th. Whether it is best to give and secure to the Superintendent, the authority and means to so conduct the work.

5th. What measures can be taken for this purpose which, while giving him freedom to act efficiently and according to his own necessities without waste of time in matters of form, will also secure a proper account of expenditure, and enable the Comptroller to exercise authority whenever there shall be due occasion to arrest unauthorized or excessive rates of expenditure.