[ 356 ] . BICHARD SKOLNIK reform prescriptions were to prove their value as an effective alternative to machine methods. Because reformers had generally given priority to improvements in policing, housing, transportation, electoral procedures, and franchise regulations, they were not entirely prepared when real accomplishment first appeared from the Department of Street Cleaning. Although an unexpected scene of reform efforts, municipal street-cleaning operations were to serve as an excellent vehicle for the presentation and elaboration of the reform approach. Reform in this area would have a special impact because it was here that the machine techniques and values were most fully in evidence. For years the Department had exemplified Tammany's attitude toward government by employing men at all levels on the sole basis of their actual or potential value to the political organization. Predictably, the Tammany faithful devoted much of their energy to political matters, a task best performed not in the streets but in the saloons. Here they demonstrated that their talents lay primarily in front of bars rather than behind brooms. Because the Department functioned primarily as a party adjunct and not as a municipal agency, the streets of the city consistently reflected various stages of neglect. Public indignation over street conditions occasionally induced Tammany to profess an interest in remedial measures, but its efforts at reform were understandably halfhearted; organizational stability took precedence over municipal cleanliness. Tammany's resistance to change served to strengthen the reformers' contention that municipal progress depended on the substitution of nonpartisanship for political penetration within city government. The reformers discovered that improvements in the Department of Street Cleaning could advance their cause in a variety of ways. Here they would have an opportunity to demonstrate that businesslike methods, efficiency, and executive authority could revitalize a spiritless force of municipal employees. A cleaner city, moreover, might foster a greater sense of civic pride—a matter of fundamental concern to the reformers. This civic pride in turn would create an environment in which the municipal government might assume the role of civic tutor, a role which reformers deemed its highest function. As civic tutor, the government through its performance would define munici-