A resolution of the Board requests me to explain the changes recently made in the management of the keepers’ force; to report my observations of their working and to advise the Commissioners what improvements are desirable.

The changes referred to having been made at my suggestion, and partly in the exercise of the discretion given me by the late Board, I may answer the first requirement chiefly by a narration of personal observations. Reference will also be desirable to an experience of your own, Mr. President, directly communicated to me and to matters of the recent history of the Department, not of record, but of your knowledge, which occurred before the appointment of any other of the present Commissioners. For these reasons and in view of the terms of the request, I trust that I shall be excused if I adopt a more personal manner of reply than might otherwise be appropriate in a report intended for the Board.

What is known as the old arrangement of the keepers’ service was devised and introduced by me, as the records of the Board will show, and under my management, while Superintendent of the Park, from 1857 to [611] 1861 (as later under the Comptrollership of Mr. Green), had been regarded as working fairly well. I found it still followed when I became President of the Department in 1872, but certainly then not working well.

I did my best during the five months of my occupancy of that position to restore efficiency under it, but with little success. Soon after my resignation, I recommended, on a call of the Board, as the result of my experience, that certain expedients of improvement should be adopted; these were not introduced, however, until after I had had, as General Superintendent, six months’ further observation of the working of the old arrangement, with a force much weeded of its worst constituents, and after the removal of a commander against whom most of the men were strongly prejudiced, and the restoration of one whom they desired.

The new arrangement has not yet been fully introduced and has by no means had a fair trial. The prospect of a satisfactory degree of efficiency under it has not, however, been very encouraging.

I thus recognize that my recent superintendence of the keepers’ service, both before and since the change, and both as President and as your general executive officer, is not to be regarded as successful.

Under these circumstances, although my desire that the Board shall act prudently, wisely and resolutely in this matter, outweighs all other interests I have in its proceedings, I am not anxious to defend any plan before it, and have no wish to urge any plan upon it. But if the Commissioners can have the patience to allow me to present the more important aspects of this part of the business they have before them, with something like the degree of fullness, which in my judgment is necessary to do justice to its importance and its difficulty, I shall be grateful.

I am aware that, if I truly represent my own estimate of its importance relatively to any and all other of the Department’s business, those to whom the subject is new can hardly fail to regard this estimate as a heated and extravagant one. I wish, therefore, first of all, to indicate the general line of reasoning by which it is influenced.

The designers of the Central Park aimed to provide, or rather to retain and develop, in it certain elements of interest and attraction which, if they were successful, would be almost peculiar to itself. They saw, from the beginning, that the danger of failure lay chiefly in the liability of misunderstanding, misuse and misappropriation of these elements of the design by the public. They saw also quite as distinctly sixteen years ago as now, that in this respect the practicability and value of their plan turned upon the question, whether a keepers’ service adequate to its special requirements could be maintained upon it. The Commissioners adopting the plan were distinctly warned of this. I, myself, stated to them, in full Board, that I should be unwilling to take any responsibility in respect to the Park unless assured that I would be allowed to exact a degree of faithfulness, activity and discipline in the keepers’ force that would be extraordinary in any service of the city.

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And I now affirm, that every dollar that has been spent thus far on the Park, or that can be spent on it, without changes in plan, uprooting its very foundations, will have been spent on the assumption of a much more efficient keepers’ service than has ever yet been had upon it. Not a line of the Park would otherwise have been laid where it is, not a tree planted where trees now stand. It has been a mistake from the beginning.

And the deplorableness of this mistake is not to be measured by the millions of dollars that will have been thrown away upon it, or the deprivations which will result from it to the people of New York. This park is, in many respects, an experiment, by the results of which the welfare of vast numbers of people in other great cities than New York cannot fail to be affected.

I have indicated the grounds of this claim in a paper read at the Lowell Institute, in Boston, in 1870, and printed in the Journal of Social Science of that year, and can barely give a clue to it here.

The growth of great cities, which began in Europe with the rise of trans-oceanic commerce in the sixteenth century, and which has lately, in all civilized countries, been so greatly stimulated by the inventions of the steam-engine, the railway, the steamship and the telegraph, brings with it great evils and dangers.

The old parks of the great cities of Europe have come to be within them by accident, and their adaptations to popular use are in every case limited, desultory and ill-combined. Experience shows, nevertheless, that they serve the purpose of mitigating and limiting the special evils of great cities, in varying but always notable and important degrees. Setting aside the elements of accessibility, local sanitary conditions and others, there is reason to believe that they are thus valuable in the ratio in which they chance to be so formed as to allow multitudes of people to experience the enjoyment of pastoral and sylvan scenery, and to the degree of that special enjoyment which they are adapted to furnish.

It follows that there is good reason for believing that had a true nature-loving art been applied to this purpose, in the formation of a park from the outset, in the choice and disposition of trees, in the arrangement of roads and walks, and of other structures required for the comfortable accommodation of multitudes of visitors, and had liberal expenditures been directed to this purpose, with as profound study and as much skill as it has been to the supplying great cities with palaces and prisons, fortifications, monuments, museums and statues, the result would have [been] beneficent beyond computation.

That it is worthwhile for civilized communities to use their wealth in this way; that humanity and patriotism and religion require that every community which occupies territory in which it is reasonably certain that a great city is to grow, should, if necessary, at some sacrifice of immediate convenience and comfort and prosperity, begin the formation of a park of this comprehensive [613] and artistically complete character, is a conclusion that no intelligent man, who will carefully study the effect on the people of the existing few and almost chance-formed city parks of the world, can resist.

Yet the demonstration of experience is lacking, and if the design of the Central Park is ever realized, will be first found in its realization. If, then, there is ground for the conviction held and stated by the designers, that the practicability and value of their plan is to turn upon the question whether a keeper’s service can be maintained upon it adequate to its special requirements, neglect to secure this one condition involves much more than a waste of resources and a calamity to the people of New York. It must necessarily cause discouragement to enterprise in the same direction everywhere, and is a wrong and misfortune to the civilized world.

I have said that the designers had undertaken to retain and develop certain elements of great value with reference to the purpose of the park, and which would be almost peculiar to itself, and that they saw that the chief difficulty of doing so would be that of preventing the misuse of these elements.

Few persons fully comprehend the purposes of a park, and still fewer, especially of city-bred persons, fully appreciate the conditions upon which the real value of the various elements of a park depend. It requires some little reflection to understand that nearly all that is agreeable and refreshing at present on the Central Park would speedily disappear if practices, harmless elsewhere, were to be continued in it; if the multitude of visitors were to move through it, for example, as freely and inconsiderately as visitors at a watering place are allowed to move through the neighboring woods and fields.

The Central Park is necessarily peculiar in this respect, and must be used with certain special restraints, because of the means employed in it to overcome the naturally harsh and forbidding landscape quality of much of its rocky surface.

It is with reference to the prevention of ignorant and inconsiderate misuse of the park that the keeper’s force chiefly needs to be organized, instructed, trained and disciplined. If it is sufficient for the part required of it, in the design of the park, in this respect, it will certainly be sufficient for protection against crime. And if its members are trained or allowed to hold the notion that their chief duty is to bring criminals to punishment, they will never serve the purpose of their organization effectively.

A clear understanding of this principle must lie at the foundation of any wise provisions for the keeping of the park.

Nevertheless, as the danger of the misuse of the park for criminal ends is a much more definite and obvious one, and the necessity of certain conditions, which have not recently existed in the keeper’s force, is just as clear with reference to it as to the more important duty, I shall now ask attention especially to this class of dangers inherent in the plan of the park.

They exist more especially in the opportunities which it presents for [614] ready concealment, for slipping quickly out of sight of others, for lying in ambush, for dodging and doubling on a pursuer, and for temporarily putting articles carried by hand out of sight.

To measure the importance of guarding against this class of dangers in the park, let it be considered that the larger part of the advance which has occurred in the value of real estate adjoining the park since its design began to be understood, and which amounts to a sum of $160,000,000, has grown out of a conviction that, for persons of great wealth and of certain social habits, a family residence near the park will be more attractively situated than anywhere else on the continent, while the number of this class is likely constantly to be larger than the number of such sites that will be available to meet the demand.

If the grounds of this conviction are analysed it will be found that they do not, by any means, lie wholly in the expectation of the outlook toward the park which will be commanded from houses so situated, for the advance in value applies to sites from which no view of the park can be obtained, but that they exist largely in the presumption that it will be safe, healthful and pleasant for women and children to walk from their houses into the park, as they would into their private grounds, when living in a country house. In short, it is assumed that in a residence near the park, there may be combined greater advantages of the city, with less of its disadvantages, especially to women and children, than anywhere else, and in this assumption the actuality of an immense amount of the nominal wealth of many of the capitalists of this city is absolutely dependent.

Suppose, then, that such statements come once to be generally believed, as were lately published in the Tribune, as to the danger of robbery, and of insults and outrages to women in the park; as to the frequency of criminal assignations in it, as to the use made of it by great numbers of common prostitutes, as to the prevalence of wantonly mischievous, lawless, reckless and brutal manners among its visitors, and as to the practical immunity from arrest which ruffians of every stamp feel themselves to enjoy in it. Clearly such a state of things, or an evident dangerous liability to such a state of things, would almost certainly lead on to a financial disaster, through which the city would lose much more than all that has been spent on the park.

What, then, are the qualities required in the keepers’ force to supply a sufficient insurance against such a liability? I wish to gain and hold the attention of the Commissioners at this time to one only, or rather to one class of qualities.

Places of sylvan seclusion on the park are so numerous, and are so distributed, that anything approaching a constant police surveillance of visitors is out of the question. So far, then, as those who come into the park are to be prevented, either from careless misuse of it, or from indulgence in mischief, [615] vice and crime, by fear of police interference, it will be from the estimate they are led to form of the chances of a keeper’s coming, within a given time, in sight of any particular spot from which he was previously at a distance. Their calculation of these chances will start with two factors: first, a certain number of keepers; second, the degree of their activity. If there were thirty times—I mean literally so—as many keepers on duty as there ever yet regularly have been, it would be but one for an acre, and if each of them were to stand as a sentry, or to move at an even slow pace back and forth on a given strip of road or walk, several hundred men might easily be engaged in illegal, licentious and rascally acts on the park, with perfect confidence that they would not be detected.

Thus it will be seen that the value of a keeper depends, first of all, on the impression which he produces on the mind of observers of activity in his duty; for upon this impression will be the estimate found of the liability that he or some other keeper will be looking at any particular spot of ground within a given time.

I ask the Commissioners to keep this essential requirement of the keepers’ force continuously in mind—this prime necessity of a habit of activity during the whole period of duty.

It will be obvious, without argument, that the necessary number of men for the service will never be secured who will, from a simple sense of obligation for their wages, and from their own understanding of the necessity, at once fix themselves in such an active habit as is required, and constantly maintain it.

The force, then, needs officers able and disposed to instruct the keepers in this respect, and to enforce their instructions by a sufficient discipline. When it is considered how the keepers are to be scattered; that they are to be for the most part alone, out of view of their officers; that they are liable to fall in with friends; that they have to be out in all weathers; that parts of their beats will be much exposed to the sun, or to wind and rain, others sheltered, it will be seen that the sufficient discipline must be unusually exacting.

Nor is argument necessary to show that the difficulties of establishing and enforcing such a degree of discipline as is required are very great; nevertheless I must ask the Commissioners to reflect for a moment on what, under the circumstances, is the chief difficulty.

The effect of political patronage—of the doctrine “to the victors belong the spoils”—has been to gradually familiarize the public mind with the idea that any public office or employment is a privilege and a favor, and it has been, from the first, difficult to make any man in the employment of the Board believe that he owes his employment to the fact that it is supposed that he will render better service of a certain kind, for a certain price, than any other man who can be obtained; it has been difficult to overcome the notion that the money paid him is only in part the wages of the labor or service he [616] renders and that the remainder is given him to purchase the favor or satisfy the demand of some person, party, club or class, or possibly out of personal regard or charity toward himself or his family.

It was only by great toil, and at some political peril for the whole undertaking, that this difficulty was overcome as it once has been, at least in a great degree, in respect to the keepers’ force.

But the difficulties of this class which formerly existed in the minds and habits of the men to be employed as keepers, were small compared with those which must now be met, because of two influences which have been latterly operating upon them.

First.—The law which forbids the city to allow any workman to work in its employment more than eight hours a day, and which in its effect makes a present to any man who obtains by any means the privilege of working for it, of an addition (in the case of laborers at the present time) of twenty per cent. to the value of his work, and which thus demonstrates the value of political patronage.

Second.—The difficulties are greatly increased, because, under the government of the city during the years 1870 and 1871, public employment was more distinctly, avowedly and systematically made a privilege and a matter of patronage and favor, and thus used as a property by those who controlled it more than ever before, and because the value of all such property was made greater, not only by increasing the rates of pay for service, but much more by reducing the measure and quality of the service required.

This reduction was very great in nearly all public service, not a few employments having been made actual sinecures; and in accordance with a well established law in political economy, the standards having been once greatly lowered, it is slow and hard work to get back again to the old mark of efficiency in any direction. No class of men on the park, or anywhere in the city service, are willing to work as hard or take as much pains in their work now as they were a few years ago; and even if the special service of the park keepers had not been directly tampered with, it was inevitable that it should be affected injuriously by the general tendency.

But I shall show that the standard of requirement with respect to the keepers was directly lowered during these two years.

According to the testimony of the captain, as you have reported it, Mr. President, when you returned to your seat at the close of the year 1872, more than fifty men had been added to the force who were not wanted for the purpose of keeping the parks, but whom he had been instructed to call for. They were placed on the force simply and solely and avowedly, as a privilege—as an act of patronage to oblige politicians.

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Obviously, if anything like the degree of activity which was necessary to make the keepers’ service efficient had been required of these new men, the purpose of their employment would not have been met. An appointment to a place on the keepers’ force would no longer have been regarded as a privilege. The “gift” of such a place would no longer have been a valuable perquisite of those holding it. It was necessary for the purpose of their appointment that the service should be easy and agreeable to them.

But there is good reason for supposing that many of those appointed were not able, even had they been disposed, to meet any requirement of extraordinary activity and endurance; that they were not able even to be ordinarily active and enduring. After more than sixty men had been dismissed, represented by the captain to be the least valuable part of the force, the surgeon was instructed to ascertain by medical survey the physical capacity of the remainder, and found that one in five were incapacitated by disease and physical injuries for active bodily exercise. (Ninety-nine men were examined, of whom thirty-two were found in a decidedly unsound condition, and nineteen pronounced positively unfit for duty. There were seven cases of hernia, some very aggravated, and thirteen of unsound lungs. Applications for appointment as keepers are not unfrequently urged on the ground that the applicants’ lungs are diseased, or that he has Bright’s disease.) It is certain, then, that the service required of these men had been very light. As, however, the fact of their special disabilities for ordinary exertion and endurance had not, before the examination, been recognized, and as they had had no special privileges on account of it, it is clear that the customs of the whole force had been accommodated to the limitations on activity and endurance required of these invalids.

There were numbers of excellent men on the force—hale, hearty, active, enduring men, and honest men. But honest men do not care to work harder or endure more or practice greater restraint for a given sum of money than others in their trade. Thus inevitably the whole force had been habituated, gradually and not perhaps by a clearly conscious process, to a very low standard in respect to activity.

The natural results were to be seen in the condition in which you found the force in November, 1871, and in the habits and notions as to their rights, privileges and duties which were still common with its members, when, in May, 1872, you turned its general management over to me. At this time you expressed in strong terms the dissatisfaction you had experienced in dealing with it. You had dismissed a third part of the men, represented to be the most indolent and inefficient, and yet had been only more and more impressed with the demoralization which existed. You remarked, especially, that you never went to the park that you were not disgusted with the loaferish appearance of the men you saw on duty.

On my first subsequent visit to the park, I said to the captain, that from your statements and from what I had myself observed, I inferred that his [618] command was in a very bad state of discipline. He replied that it was so, and would necessarily remain so until the men should learn that they held their places less by means of the influence which they could command, through friends and otherwise, with the Commissioners, than by reason of their own good conduct. He said that after all who had been dismissed there were undoubtedly men still upon the force who had never done half a fair day’s duty, and who never expected to; others whose chief diligence was in acting as spies with a view of finding visitors in positions which they would be distressed to have publicly reported, and so getting a chance to blackmail them, and but few who would give themselves more trouble in their duty than they thought necessary to avoid being discharged. Even this consideration, he repeated, operated but little with many, so great was their confidence in the influence of friends to serve them, and punish the officers who might report against them.

In the course of the summer facts came to my knowledge showing that each of these imputations—indeed some of a more disgusting character—were justified, with respect to particular individuals, and though I believed that the main body was composed of men of fair character, able and willing, but for mistaken or insufficient notions of their duty, to meet all reasonable requirements upon it, there was no room for doubt:

1st. That such requirements were not met.

2d. That there was no general desire or intention of meeting them.

3d. That any special requirement on the part of an officer, or any unusual effort on the part of an officer to secure faithful service, was habitually resented as an act of personal usurpation on his part, and that any official report against a man’s conduct was generally attributed to personal malice.

4th. That the men were generally disposed to depend much more on their standing with certain persons having no responsibility in respect to the park, than upon the evidence of their conduct as keepers; thus, almost invariably, if a man was called upon to answer a grave charge, he began by producing, often with an expression of confidence that was almost insolent, a letter from someone requesting that he might be dealt with leniently.

During a period of four months, I was striving faithfully to secure improvement under the old arrangement; nor should I have urged such changes as have since been made as soon as I did, nor, indeed, precisely such changes at all, had I not been compelled by the proceedings of the Board.

On the 2d of October last, a resolution was offered ordering an immediate reduction of the keepers’ force, and especially in the number of its inspecting officers. At my request it was withdrawn, and as a substitute I was asked to devise and report to the Board some plan of securing a more economical and efficient administration of the force, with the understanding that I should propose means of lessening the number of its officers, and otherwise reducing its expenses.

[619]

I need hardly say that my own judgment did not approve this policy; but there is a time for all things, and this happened to be the time, not so much for increasing the efficiency of the city’s service, as for reducing outlays for it. Accepting the necessity, therefore, I set about the duty given me, and at the meeting last before your return to the presidency, I presented the required report, which was printed as Document No. 41.

On the 20th of November it was discussed in the Board, and as the result, I was directed to make as large a reduction as practicable in the regular force, and to organize an auxiliary force from the workmen; the method of such reduction being left to my discretion.

If the Commissioners will take the trouble to read the report above referred to, they will find the occasion fully stated for some of the changes since made, and I propose now to show only what is not there fully stated, namely, the motives which induced me later to recommend the introduction of “the round system.”

It was obvious that, as matters stood, one of the chief difficulties of recovering a tolerable state of discipline in the force lay in the unfrequent inspection of the men in the field, and in the consequent fact that neglect of duty and gross acts of insubordination might be much indulged in, with no fear of punishment or even reproof. I saw, therefore, that to reduce the number of officers without making radical changes in the routine of duties, by which, in some way, this difficulty would be met, would necessarily open the way to even greater laxity of discipline.

To fully understand this, some knowledge of the existing state of affairs under the old system will be necessary.

Each keeper, when going on duty, was assigned to a defined district or beat, within which, theoretically, he was answerable for all that occurred; that is to say, he was supposed to pass from one point of it to another at such frequent intervals that the chances would be small that any person would do wrong in it without his seeing and checking or arresting him. As the ground thus assumed to be covered by a keeper was an area generally of over fifty acres, and sometimes of fully one hundred acres, mostly of very broken surface, with innumerable concealments of rock and bush, this supposition may seem preposterous. I must explain, therefore, that it was at least much less so in the condition of the park before it had been planted, or before the shrubs had attained the height of a man’s waist, and when the number of visitors in summer was but one-third as great as now. As I had planned the system of keeping at that time, the district patrolmen were, as the shrubs grew larger and the park came to be more used, intended to be supplemented by uniformed working-men who would be at all times disposed irregularly in all parts of each keeper’s beat, and who would, incidentally to their duties as workmen, assist its responsible guardian in the capacity of watchmen.

They were also to be mainly relieved of the necessity of attention to carriages in motion by a special patrol of mounted men on the drives.

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But as the organization remained in 1872, it will be evident that if this theory of the responsibility of each keeper for the conduct of all visitors within a district of from fifty to a hundred acres was in the least degree to be realized, the keeper had necessarily to be in almost constant active motion, and constantly looking about him, far and near, in all directions. With the increased difficulties arising from the growth of foliage and the enlarged number of visitors, there was need that he should have grown more and more active, and more and more vigilant and quick-sighted.

But what were the facts?

In making the circuit of the park, I often saw all but one or two of the whole number of the section on duty either upon the Drive or within twenty feet of it, from which it was evident that the really weak points, the interior sections of the park, were almost wholly unprotected. Moreover, the appearance of both the patrolmen and the gatemen, as I saw them, was nearly always that of idlers; of men with nothing to do—waiting for something to turn up. I never saw a man moving with a brisk wide-awake air but I found it was time for him to quit duty.

My observations, in these respects, had been confirmed by comparing them with those of others. I had requested friends, when walking in the park, to notice how often they found a keeper apparently on active duty in the more secluded parts, and they invariably reported that they found none; that with the exception of a man on the more level walks of the Ramble and another near the Terrace, the force seemed to be concentrated on the Drive, and that even when men were found at a distance from the Drive, they were commonly engaged in conversation and giving no attention to their duty. I found, on inquiry of the Superintendent of the Park, that he believed that, with very few exceptions, the keepers never went off the Drive, unless they had some special call to do so, or went to seek their own ease. The captain also acknowledged it to be so.

There were at this time eight officers, each of whom took his turn inspecting the keepers on their beats. The chances were, however, that a keeper, after he had left the station until he returned to go off duty, would be seen by an officer, or the fact of his being on his post or on the park established in any way, not oftener than once in five hours; when seen he would be under notice not more, probably, than one or two minutes.

Under the beat system, it was, then, a very easy matter for a keeper, however unfaithful in his disposition, to so manage as not to be caught by his officers in distinctly derelict acts. For all that, the more common report against the keepers was, that they had been found by one of their inspecting officers, on his regular round, sitting or lying down in some retired place, in complete abandonment of duty. There were many evidences to show that the instances in which these marked examples of neglect were observed and reported to me were but a small fraction of those which occurred. Nearly two-thirds of all such reports were made, for example, by one-third of the inspecting [621] officers, the lieutenant alone making double the average of all, and, as I have before said, those complained of nearly always took the ground that, for some special reason of personal malice they had been singled out to be brought before me.

I had not yet proposed to resort to the “round system” as a means of breaking up these habits, but had endeavored in every way I could to impress upon the force the danger to themselves of their habits, as well as the danger to public interests. I had repeatedly posted written warnings in the station for that purpose. I had dismissed a number of those whose offences in this special respect were distinctly proven, and had removed two officers of whose unfaithfulness in reporting such offences I was satisfied.

Yet in six months scarcely the smallest degree of perceptible improvement had been gained. I had too many other responsibilities to be able to spend much time on the park; but to show that my impressions in this respect were not the result of accidentally more unfavorable observations than would have been the case if they had been more extended, I may quote the opinion of the Superintendent, who had been in close and daily observation of the keepers in all parts of the park for fourteen years. He said to me, “You will find that they have been indulged in these lazy habits so long that they are now inveterate, and you cannot get the better of them except by breaking up the force altogether and starting again with new men.”

Before I had acted on the resolution of the Board requiring a revision of the organization, the change in the captains had been made. Captain Mills’ influence on the force had, I think, been in some respects unfortunate. My principal reason for thinking so will be found stated on page 7 of my report, Document No. 41. But Captain Mills had an advantage over Captain Koster, with reference to this special difficulty of inactivity.

He was himself a notably alert man, nervous and active to a fault. Captain Koster’s faults are of the opposite class.

Three months’ further observation of the men under Captain Koster’s command satisfied me as a matter of fact, that, at least nothing was being gained with respect to this difficulty.

After much deliberation, then, and with the very deliberate approval of the captain and lieutenant, and the unanimous sanction of the Board, a modification was made of the old arrangement, under which it was believed that something might be gained.

To one element in the modified plan a certain degree of public attention has been called, which, truly stated, is this. Out of the thirty-six patrolmen employed on the park, sixteen are daily required, in fine weather, to make three rounds of the park drive within a given time. The chief difference in this respect between their present and former mode of doing duty being that now they walk at a very moderately rapid rate and never sit or lounge except in the station-houses.

But there are some other differences between the old and new arrangements [622] of perhaps more consequence, and they may be best shown by stating in what way the keeping of the park is provided for at a given period, and I take for the purpose that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

There were before the changes a certain number of men each at a gate: there are the same number since, and, without doubt, the gate duties are better performed now than before, though the difference is not of much importance.

There were before the change twelve men, each nominally patrolling a beat, of whom the chances were that seven or eight were at any moment on the Drive or within sight of it.

There are never less than that number now on the Drive, but there is this difference: the men on the drive now are never seen standing still (unless on an occasion of duty), never sauntering, never conversing long with friends, and they never leave the Drive to take a seat except at the station. They report in person to an officer at least every hour and a half instead of every four or five hours, they cannot leave the park or go off their duty ten minutes at a time without its being known to their officers, and their precise position is registered at least every half hour.

There are besides, under the new arrangements, four keepers constantly on beat duty, and the chances are that at any moment at least three of them are in those parts of the park not seen from the Drives.

Then there are, under the present arrangement, daily (after 10 a.m.), on the walks thirty men (the “extra keepers”), each having his district, and being obliged at certain not unfrequent intervals to visit every nook and corner of it which is open to the public; nor can he fail to do so without leaving evidence of his neglect. These men have nearly all had from ten to sixteen years’ experience on the park; most of them have for years acted as special policemen on Sundays and holidays. They are selected as of good character, honest and industrious. They are competent to meet nine-tenths of the ordinary requirements of visitors on the keepers’ system; to give advice, directions and needed information, and to interrupt and caution those who are disposed to petty mischief. Being associated with the change which compels the patrolmen to a certain degree of activity in their duty, they have been subject to slander and ridicule, and in some measure made to feel themselves in a weak, ridiculous and unpopular position. But one specific complaint has, however, been made as yet against any of them, and I am assured by visitors that they have found them attentive, civil and equal to the duties required of them. My own observation is that since they went on duty there is less straggling out of the walks, less breaking of the shrubs and less petty pilfering in the interior parts than before. Mr. Manning, who has a general oversight of the shrubbery and walks of that part of the park which is most frequented by visitors, assures me that there is no question of it.

On the whole, there can be no doubt that the parts of the park of [623] most importance to be well kept—that is to say, the retired and secluded parts—are much better kept now than before; neither can there be any doubt that the gates and entrance roads are better kept; nor yet any that the keepers of all classes are much more steadily in active duty, or that they engage much less in practices which were forbidden, and which were disgraceful and demoralizing.

The cost, in salaries and wages, of the force under the new arrangement, including the night-watch, has been at the monthly rate of $7,945. The cost of the force during the corresponding period of 1872 was $9,980; of 1871, $12,697.

It remains to examine the disadvantages of the new arrangement.

Because, under the old arrangement, patrolmen spent a greatly undue part of their time on the Drive at the expense of the interior parts of the park, wider spaces will now sometimes be found on the Drive on which there is no patrolmen, and fast driving is thought to be more prevalent than formerly. If so, it is in part to be accounted for by the fact that the mounted Metropolitan police have this year put a stop to fast driving on the wooden pavement of Fifth avenue adjoining the park.

Supposing the new system is defective in this respect, however, it is not difficult to apply a remedy: at the expense of half a dozen mounted men the evil of fast driving, no matter how great it shall come to be, can be broken up whenever desired, more effectually than by an addition of double that number of stationary foot-keepers placed on beats.

I now come to the only serious objection to the present arrangement—the alleged demoralizing influence it has had upon the men.

The rationale of this demoralization is as follows: The men (so far as they are affected by it) consider that the requirement of walking certain distances within certain periods of time is in itself so hard, so much beyond what the Department has a right to ask of them, that they are excusable for avoiding other duties with respect to which they must necessarily be put on their honor and their discretion. They feel it to be necessary to keep steadily moving on the lines of shortest distance between the points they are required to visit, and that they cannot afford to have their attention diverted from this single duty of making time by watchfulness of visitors, or any service to them except on occasions of distinct and notable necessity.

More than this, with some of the men the methods by which the requirement of a certain degree of rapidity of movement is enforced, are felt to be tyrannical and cruel in such a degree as to provoke and establish a desire, and a more or less distinct purpose, to bring the system into public contempt and odium, and a degree of inefficiency is thus accounted for beyond what would result directly from the defects of the system.

It is necessary to state that I have no official knowledge of this state of mind on the part of the men. I have not heard the smallest complaint, or [624] remonstrance or expression of desire to be tasked less, from one of the force: the captain, though he believes that the men are so affected, reports to me that he has not.

My presumption that it exists results from a few statements made to me by visitors of occurrences under their observation and of conversation with keepers; from newspaper reports, and from my own observation of the manners of the keepers on duty, confirmed as it is by the impressions made, as I am informed, on the minds of some of the Commissioners. It is, therefore, difficult for me to review these objections because they are so indefinite and intangible.

But it is to be observed, in the first place, that the requirement of three rounds applies to but sixteen out of the thirty-six patrol keepers in any day; that the whole number of patrol keepers have been selected by the surgeon and officers from a body of men twice their number, and that by an ordinance of the Board, this body had been recruited by selection of the fittest from the gate-keepers. They are thus now picked men, and are paid as picked men half a dollar a day more than the post-keepers, and a dollar a day more than the extra keepers.

A man on round-duty is in very light marching order; he carries no arms, no club; nothing but his necessary light clothing; he is not belted; he suits himself with shoes; he wears a Panama hat; he is required to make a halt of one or two minutes three times in every hour; he is required to halt ten minutes, (and then is allowed to sit and take refreshment if he wishes), four times in every five hours; he is not marching over rough ground, nor in dust nor mud, but on watered, raked and rolled pleasure-roads, of very easy grade, frequently arched by shade-trees; he is asked to move at an average rate of but a few yards more than two and a half miles an hour, which is not as fast as the ordinary military marching rate. The time he is thus required to occupy (in movement) is eight hours a day.

At the outside, he is asked to walk twenty-one miles in nine hours, including stoppages, and this never in stormy or very hot weather, and never three days in succession.

Haswell, who has the highest reputation for accuracy in such matters, makes a walk of thirty miles, meaning on common country roads, the equivalent of a fair day’s work of an ordinary laborer. I have myself walked thirty miles a day on an average, carrying a knapsack, and across a hilly country, for weeks in succession; never feeling excessive fatigue, and gaining in strength and weight.

After the battle of Gettysburgh, as General Secretary of the Sanitary Commission, I engaged several surgeons and other trustworthy agents to make special inquiry as to the physical condition in which the Union army entered upon that struggle. It was established that 144 regiments had been marching, each, at a rate of over twenty miles a day, and some thirty, for two or three weeks previously, carrying muskets, ammunition, knapsacks and rations. [625] They were living chiefly on hard-tack and coffee with some salt pork, a few only having had a little beef, and marching on wretched roads, in clouds of dust and in a temperature higher than we have had this summer. In the opinion of the commanding officers and the surgeons of a majority of these regiments, the health of the men had been favorably affected by the march.

Let the statements, grossly exaggerated as they are, which are made in the name of the keepers, as proof of the intolerable hardship and cruelty of the walk required of them, be read in the light of facts like these, and their chief importance will be found to lie in the evidence which they afford of how greatly these keepers had before been habituated to come short of the service which should have been required of them. This, let me repeat, was to move constantly and with as much activity as practicable during a period of eight hours from one part of their beats to another, to guard against the possible trespasses of visitors and all disorder.

If they had been doing their duty before would it have been thought hard to ask them to walk for eight hours a day at the rate of two and a half miles an hour, and if the discipline and morale of the force appears to be, in the least degree, lower than it was before the change, is it not much more rational to attribute the fact to a previous inefficiency of management than to a present excessive exaction?

Whatever the Board may think of the fitness of the means used to train the force to habits of greater activity, and to secure an observance of the most important general orders, it cannot be doubted that some change from the old arrangement, favorable to this purpose, was absolutely necessary, nor that, in certain particulars of what was meant to be accomplished, success has been attained.

For the rest, it certainly was not to be expected that entirely satisfactory results would be reached in two months’ time in an undertaking to increase the effective strength of the force while reducing its cost, and under the conditions which have existed; the force itself hotly disposed to resent and resist the purpose; its officers insufficient if not obstructive, and a strong interest using unscrupulous means from without to foster discontent, distrust and insubordination.

I am finally asked to state what improvements I now think desirable in the arrangements; but if the Board should not be disposed to leave with me the executive management of the business, under its general orders, I presume that after what I have now said, it will care to hear very little more of my views in this respect.

If the Board should be disposed to trust me further with it, there are several improvements which I have many years had in my mind, and for [626] which I should be glad, in due time, to ask its consideration. For the present I should recommend that, as soon as its general policy is firmly settled, the force should be recruited to the full number assumed in the present organization, which would require the promotion of one man from the position of post to that of patrol-keeper, and an addition of twelve post-keepers. I have not heretofore recommended this to be done, because, in the condition of expectancy and demoralization in which the force more or less has been of late, the education of new men would begin under great disadvantages. I should advise that a portion of the recruits be obtained by promotion from the extra keepers, if men can be found among them who are able to pass the proper examination. I should also advise that the additional force for the small parks, recommended in a report now lying on the table of the Board, be at once organized under the immediate direction of a discreet officer detailed for that purpose from the Central Park force, and that the place of such officer be supplied by promotion from the ranks. I should recommend that the subject of a small mounted force have early consideration.

But all these are details of no pressing importance. What is first of all wanted is that every man, and especially every officer, should be made to believe that this new Board cares to know nothing about him except what he is worth in himself for the business of park-keeping; that this new Board will have a strong and sustainedly strong policy with reference to this business, which will be carried out in every detail with a single eye, energetically, resolutely and without fear or favor.

Hitherto, at least for the last two years, every standing order has been regarded as tentative, every act of authority as the manifestation of a purpose of no significance except for the moment. The thoughts of the force, from top to bottom, instead of being upon the means of satisfying the organic requirements of the public interests, have been upon the question, who are to be the next Commissioners and who is to have “influence” with them?

Whatever else is to be done for its improvement, means must be taken for putting it under much more careful education and much more thorough discipline. The manner in which the men shall be disposed, the time and place in which each shall perform his duty, is a matter of wholly secondary consequence to this.