We overhauled the civil courts and made them over new
in the charter of the Greater New York. We lighted dark halls;
closed the "cruller" bakeries in tenement-house cellars that had
caused the loss of no end of lives, for the crullers were boiled
in fat in the early morning hours while the tenants slept, and when
the fat was spilled in the fire their peril was awful. We fought
the cable-car managers at home and the opponents of a truant school
at Albany. We backed up Roosevelt in his fight in the Police Board,
and--well, I shall never get time to tell it all. But it was a
great year. That it did not keep the Good Government clubs alive
was no fault of my programme. It was mine, I guess. I failed to
inspire them with the faith that was in me. I had been going it
alone so long that I did not know how to use the new tool that had
come to hand. There is nothing like an organization if you know
how to use it. I did not. Perhaps, also, politics had something to
do with it. They were in for playing the game. I never understood
it.
But if I did not make the most of it, I had a good time that year.
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