Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-06
THANKLESS PLACE

General Bingham. he can have his job OF
chief cop of III old Moo Yawk" observed
the stout male person who knows quite q
heap about the Smart Alec burg lying be-
tween Brooklyn and Jersey City. IT'S all
his'n. He's welcome to 1t. I am not going
to try to undermine him and take it away
from him. Little Mac couldn't have I'M
loaded that job on me IL he'd offered me
eight dollars and fifty cents minute and
expenses, and I'm a grasping and penuri-
Gus mug at that, and could use the money.
IF anybody were to heave alongside OF
me and invite me to name the one stable
public job that didn't want and wouldn
take If they offered 1t to me on platinum
platter I'd be there with the reply. and the
reply I'D be bearin' on and appertainin' to
the billet that General Bingham has al
lowed them to bunco him into accepting.
ANY man who accepts that mess and
hammock number Immediately becomes a
charter and lifelong member of the original
You-Lose Association He voluntarily ma
rooms himself on a little patchy mound
that is situated equf-distant between the
devil and the deep sea, and he has just
about as much chance to get by as a Hud-
son bay snowbird would have in the jungle
lining the Orinoco river.
Already, just because General Bingham
delivered himself of a few little soldierly,
Moo Yawk to take the boss cop job, they We
started to calling him General Damdam
over there. And before a month has pass
ed. no matter how he sits on the job, no
matter what new or old ideas he shoots
into the service, no matter how earnestly
he tries to impress a well-meaning individ-
uality upon the task he so nOnchalantly ac-
cepted. they'll be making him out to be a
sort of cross between a Chinese chimpanZee
and Hfndoostan hyena, and he'll have no
more chance to square himself than have
10 become general manager of the De Beers
Diamond Mining Company.
Everybody that swings along'n be slip
ping him lemon. The people who pretend
to be his friends and well-wishers will each
have section of heavy gas pipe carefully
secreted about their clothing, ready to adj
minister the waliop behind the left ear the
instant the proper moment presents itself.
If he tries to sort of jolly the force under
him into doing the work that they're hired
to do, and doing it on the level. he'll be
called kidder and hand-shaker and an
incompetent. If he takes up stern line
OF action and insists that his bat-eared
bunch do their work properly without being
coddled along. they'll inaugurate the wall
that he's a buckle army officer. who's trying
to run the town of lii Old Moo Yawk on
army post principles. His personal charac-
teristics will be taken up and ridiculed.
They'll give him the boot because of the
twist of his mustache the slant of his
eyes, the cut of his hair, the fit of his
shirt, the relative clingingness or bagginess
of his pantaloons. No man is big or exalted
enough to run that gauntlet unscathed.
They made such joke of no less man
than Roosevelt while he was trying to run
the police department Of Moo Yawk that
he surely would never have recovered po-
HticalIy, from the ridicule and abuse that
were heaped upon him had not the Spanish
war OPPORTUNITY drifted along and given
him the chance to rehabilitate himself by
capturing the imagination of that large ele-
ment of any population which Is appealed
TO by the lighting soldier gag.
THE man who takes up the tangled
skeins of the boss cops job in Moo Yawk
finds that about three-fourths of the laws
that he is sworn to enforce simply can't be
enforced in Moo Yawk. He finds a bunch of
laws made and spread upon the books at the
period when Moo Yawk was still, to GER
tain gradually diminishing extent, an Amer
lean city. But lii old Moo Yawk is no
longer an American city, or anything like
one. 1t is a continental city, pure and SIM
pie, and the vast majority of the population
of Moo Yawk simply decline to obey munich
pal laws, governing the excise question. for
instance. made when the town was still
American, Some boss cops, at the begin
ming of their task, have acted upon the
principle that the best way to make stand
ing laws that are not wanted obnoxious is
to enforce them rigidly and up to the hilt
So they've enforced them, gaining the
hatred and discomfort and ridicule of the
people affected by such laws, but they've
never succeeded in having any of the OBJ
CATION of laws is a matter upon which the
legislature of Moo Yawk has the most TO do
and the Moo Yawk legislature is COMPOSED
mainly of bucolic hanky-panks, who hate
the city fellers and banker to make things
Just as unpleasant as possible for them
and there you are.
IF, on the other hand, the boss cop Of
Moo Yawk concludes to disregard the OBJ
noxious laws and make little or no actual
effort to enforce them, the Puritancal bunch
get after him with their bell-mouthed blum
derbusses and accuse him of being a low
browed crook in league with the saloon ana
gambling interests for the rake-off that they
hand him.
IF, in his effort to duck these two out
comes, he decides to take a sort of middle
path, they call him a straddler, a nincom-
poop who is trying to sit on both sides of
the fence at once a dOuble-face a time
server and zero with the rim torn off
All sorts and characters of men have
taken that boss cops job In lii old Moo
1awk during space of time we'll within
my own recollection. and not one of them
that can recall ever stepped down and out
with much more than a rag Of his self-re-
spect. much less his reputation left
That Mulberry street plant is a charnal
house of busted regulations. The very walls
of the place exude and diffuse the odor of
calumny. Bingham is a strong man and a
good fellow He may smash the hoodoo and
start something new. I hope So But he
got TO show me- In the meantime I'm go
ing to let him have his job and hang on to
1t. am not going to try to take 1T away
from him, for like to have folks think that
I'm just one teenchy notch better than a
yaller dog as long as l can keep EN- hypno-
tiZed to that belief"