Whatever good end the letters about the Central Park which you printed last week were designed to serve, there are at least three ways in which harm might obviously result from them:

I. The announcement that there is no longer an effective police force in the Park, and that not only ordinary disorders, but frightful crimes and outrages, are now committed upon it at all times with impunity, was calculated to stimulate all sorts of lawlessness into activity, and increase whatever tendency to mischief, in fact, existed.

II. If there had been any inclination with any of the keepers to make the requirements which are represented to be so hard upon them appear impracticable and inefficacious through a sullen, faithless, perfunctory, and equivocal compliance with them—a form of mutiny which always evinces a previous deep-seated demoralization—and thus to induce the incoming Board to undo the work of their predecessors, the letters were adapted to sustain and advance such an inclination.

III. So far as the representations made of the dangers and generally disgraceful condition of the Park should be credited, they would be a source of pain and mortification to many readers of The Tribune who had come to regard it with some degree of affectionate pride, and would certainly prevent many women and children from visiting or at least from having that enjoyment in it to which these fine days and its present unequaled condition of bloom and verdure would otherwise be so favorable.

For this latter reason more especially I shall ask your leave to point to a few circumstances in which I trust some degree of reassurance and comfort may be found. Your correspondent represents himself as in a hot rage and his avowed purpose being to wake up the City of New-York and stir it to the [605] same condition. His letters consist mainly of declamatory rhetoric, which, on cooling down, would be found to contain nothing of more serious import than the following allegations: That there was formerly a keeper’s service on the Park which rightly commanded the confidence of the public, and under the protection of which women and children could resort to it with safety; that under the now expiring Board of Park Commissioners, this organization with its well-tried rules and discipline has been abandoned and a completely new system adopted, “so arduous, ineffective, and generally abominable that no sensible man can find a redeeming feature in it;” that in consequence—observe the leap, in consequence—of these changes, the keepers are in a dejected and demoralized condition; they have no leisure for that attention to ladies which they have been habituated to offer; the Park is in a fair way to be given up to the depraved and dangerous classes; highway robberies and worse things are getting to be common, and unless the keepers are allowed to go back to their old ways will be more common. It is even now no fit place of resort for decent people.

The degree in which these representations, however calmly made, would rouse the angry passions in any well-constituted beast, might be less perhaps than would otherwise be the case, if the fact were fully understood, that when they were written the changes alluded to had been initiated less than a month; that they were part of a plan not yet fully operative, and, of course, working imperfectly; and seen and described very imperfectly, and that since they had been made, neither by the complaints of citizens, the returns of the keepers, the personal observation of the Commissioners and their superintending officers, nor yet by the diligence of the reporters of the public press had any increased tendency to profligacy, ruffianism or disorder in any way appeared. During the month just one complaint in regard to the Park has been received at the office of the Department; it is from a resident near it who avers that it has been one of his pleasures when in the Park to converse with the keepers, and that now they tell him they have no time for talking. The head of the organization reports officially and voluntarily that there has been no increase in the number of offenses of visitors against decency and order in any respect. During the last three days there have been 160,000 visitors in the Park, with a larger proportion of respectable women and girls than ever before. I was each day upon it, and passed through different parts of it on foot and on wheels, and saw not one single offense against modesty nor the smallest violation of the law. In some respects better order was kept than I have ever seen before when the walks were greatly crowded. I compared observations on this point with gentlemen who have been regular frequenters of it during the last 15 years, who confirmed my impression. One thing more: during these 15 years, the President of the Department and myself have been personally known to many of these keepers, who, to their honor it may be said, have never received a reproof from us, much less conscious injustice or intentional unkindness. They know that they have our [606] respect and confidence. We have had friendly words with more than one of them during the period of the fearful hardships to which they are supposed to have been recently subject, but of these hardships not a word have we heard from them. Finally, as your correspondent thinks that the keepers have been quite knocked up by the severity of their duties, it must be added that, according to the surgeon’s reports, the health of the force was hardly ever better; there has been one case of undoubted malingering and one of intoxication, but nothing like breaking down from overwork. There is one statement of your correspondent which I can verify. Whatever such dangers there may be as he enumerates, they increase many-fold at night-fall. I recommend no woman to stroll in the Park, and I answer for no man’s safety in it from bullies, garroters, or highway robbers after dusk. There has been already one mysterious murder in the park in the evening, under those perfect rules which have been discarded; there will be more until the danger of keeping it open is better understood. I know of no great city park anywhere in the world in which, when opened at night, the worst crimes have not been frequent. I have the authority of the late Sir Richard Mayne for the statement that with no possible force can a park within a large town be a safe place of resort at night. But your correspondent’s eloquence happens to be as much wasted on this point as others, for, after 7 in the evening, not only is a larger proportion of the whole number of regular keepers kept on duty than under the arrangement to which he demands a return, but actually a larger number are on beat duty, and they are much more effectively placed.

Modesty shall not prevent me from adding one other ground of reassurance to those who have been distressed by your correspondent’s lamentations. I have the misfortune to be that malignant genius whom in imagination he has seen set above his elders on the Park, and through whose ignorance and impracticability the interests of the public in it have been placed in such grave peril.

In this city a generation passes away and a new one comes on in a very few years, and thus probably to not a few of your readers living in it my name is unknown in connection with the Central Park, as apparently it has been until now by your youthful correspondent. To such, some added confidence that the Park has not yet been wholly given up to the “demnition bowwows” may be afforded by the following bit of autobiography:

Shortly before the land now occupied by the Central Park became the property of the city, I was led to make a personal study of the most frequented public parks of Europe, including their police management, making for this purpose the acquaintance of their administrative officers and superintendents, and giving a part of nearly every day for several months to the work. A strong conviction was then established in my mind which has ever since been growing stronger, that when a large park in the midst of or near to a dense population failed to be well kept, it would be a nuisance and an injury to that population, and that especially in any large park adapted in other [607] respects to be of much permanent value to the City of New-York, a body of keepers—specially instructed and disciplined, very different from the ordinary street police, active, zealous, cheerful, and courteous in the performance of their delicate duties—would be a condition of primary and essential consequence. I saw that to secure this condition—it would be necessary that the men selected for the purpose should fully understand that they would be paid only for their actual work in the Park at somewhere near the rates of pay they could fairly expect to earn in other occupations in the open market, not for political services or as a mark of personal favor or evidence of personal patronage and influence. I also saw that a degree of discipline must be necessary to success, such as in our country is seldom found except in the army and navy. I need hardly add that I also saw that, under the special political and social conditions of New-York City, this essential element of permanent value in a large park would actually be more difficult to establish and maintain than any other. An opportunity was offered me to impress these convictions on the Commissioners of the Central Park soon after their organization in 1857, and I was soon afterward authorized by them to select and instruct 20 men as a nucleus of a permanent organization of park-keepers. Subsequently I was allowed to enlarge the number to 55, their rate of pay was increased from $1.50 to $2 per diem, a uniform adopted, and officers provided for. Meanwhile the plan of the Park prepared by Mr. Vaux and myself was adopted by the Commissioners, and I was charged with the organization and management of its construction, in which for a time from 2,000 to nearly 4,000 men were engaged. I did not, however, cease to take personal supervision of the keepers’ force, but in the midst of other duties of a very engrossing character gave daily for a period of three years a considerable share of my time and thought to its further organization, regulation, instruction, and discipline. This was continued till I was called off by war duties, in 1861. The columns of The Tribune will witness, I believe, what the character of the force then was, and will show that the good spirit with which all classes of the public had been induced to yield to the requirements of a somewhat refined good order in the Park, was a matter of general surprise and congratulation. The early and continued popularity of the Park and the possibility of obtaining the large appropriations which have been required in so far carrying out its design, was due in no contemptible degree to this circumstance, and this circumstance was largely due, as I believe and claim, to the strong convictions which I had been led by careful observation and study to form on the subject, and the endless painstaking with which I addressed myself to this part of my duties; the honorable zeal with which I was seconded by certain of my associates, and the steadiness with which I was sustained by certain of my superiors.

Within five years it is notorious that the park-keepers have lost much of their original character; it is perhaps not equally notorious, but it is equally true, that visitors to the Park are less amenable to the requirements of good keeping.

[608]

Your correspondent can imagine no possible motives for the recent changes. Without going far when preparing for his work, he might have read the following, at least, partial explanation of them, a copy of it having been placed in the hand of every keeper on the 1st of May. It had been prepared and printed in February by order of the Commission.

Among the circumstances which have obliged considerable changes to be ordered in the regulations for the keeping of the Park are the following:

After the dismissal of more than a third of the force, represented by its officers to be its least promising members, and after much effort to secure improvement under existing rules, a satisfactory appearance of vigilance, discipline, and activity in a keeper on duty has remained exceptional.

Moreover, although a keeper, while on his beat or post, rarely comes under the observation of an officer unexpectedly to himself, instances have continued to be disgracefully common of keepers seen by their officers under conditions raising a strong presumption of intentional neglect of duty.

It has been too evident, from these and other circumstances, that a habit of disregarding the just claims upon them of the Commissioners and of the public, had been strongly established with many members of the force, and, that under existing arrangements, the Commissioners have been unable to enforce a faithful compliance with the contract which is, in effect, made between themselves and each keeper at his appointment, and which is renewed and ratified whenever the keeper puts on his uniform.