Mayor Strong had already offered me the Street-Cleaning Department.

For this work I did not feel that I had any especial fitness.

I resolutely refused to accept the position, and the Mayor ultimately got a far better man for his purpose in Colonel George F.Waring.The work of the Police Department, however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it.
The man who was closest to me throughout my two years in the Police Department was Jacob Riis.

By this time, as I have said, I was getting our social, industrial, and political needs into pretty fair perspective.

I was still ignorant of the extent to which big men of great wealth played a mischievous part in our industrial and social life, but I was well awake to the need of making ours in good faith both an economic and an industrial as well as a political democracy.