Colonel George Edwin Waring, Jr. Photograph by Pach Brothers, the new-yokk historical society. businessman, who had responded to the political draft more from a sense of duty than conviction, Strong revealed his limited commitment by declaring his unwillingness to serve beyond his three-year term.2 His appointments, although an improvement over Tammany standards, were nevertheless inconsistent with his preelection nonpartisan declarations. The indomitable Theodore Roosevelt, occupying the office of police commissioner, might have provided the necessary spark, but instead, preoccupied with enforcing the Sunday closing of saloons, unable to work along with his fellow commissioners, and uninhibited in criticizing the reformers, he merely reinforced the prevailing image of reformers as ineffectual, disputatious malcontents. Yet the Strong administration did not go down as another in a rather unillustrious line of reform regimes. One department resisted the prevailing mediocrity and in so doing provided a vital staging area where 2 The New York Times, November 9,1895. [355 J