. Town and city. lonel Waring agreed with them. He therefore decidedthat the first thing to do was to separate street cleaningfrom politics. When he came to that decision his famoussaying was that he would put a man instead of a voterbehind every broom. This does not mean that men were to stop voting; itonly means that voting was not to interfere with streetcleaning. So long as a man worked well he was to keephis position no matterhow he voted, and whenhe did not work wellhe was to go no matterwhom he voted for. With this arrange-ment lazy and care-less workers were soondropped, while all whow
. Town and city. lonel Waring agreed with them. He therefore decidedthat the first thing to do was to separate street cleaningfrom politics. When he came to that decision his famoussaying was that he would put a man instead of a voterbehind every broom. This does not mean that men were to stop voting; itonly means that voting was not to interfere with streetcleaning. So long as a man worked well he was to keephis position no matterhow he voted, and whenhe did not work wellhe was to go no matterwhom he voted for. With this arrange-ment lazy and care-less workers were soondropped, while all whowere willing to dofaithful work stayed. Naturally enough, there was a wonderful change atonce. The streets grew cleaner. Men who did thesweeping not only began to respect themselves, but theywere more and more respected by everybody else; somuch so that after a while the street-cleaning depart-ment of New York City was heard of throughout theUnited States and Europe, and everywhere it wasspoken of with A Street Sweeper and his Tools 34 TOWN AND CITY The sweepers themselves were called Colonel Warings White Wings because their uniform was a looselyfitting uniform of white duck with a white helmet tomatch. The suit was generally changed Mondays andThursdays, oftener if necessary, so that a street sweeperin New York always looked tidy and clean. Colonel Waring had over sixteen hundred regularstreet sweepers, almost a thousand cart drivers, besidesforemen, superintendents, and overseers; he also dividedthe city into definite sections, and each man knew exactlywhat part of a particular street he was to keep a rule each had charge of about one third of a mile,but on particularly crowded streets there were sixor seven men to a mile. Here, too, each man had hisown section, which he was to sweep as many times aday as was necessary to keep it clean. No sweeper wassupposed to work over eight hours a day. Before Colonel Waring took charge sweeping machineshad been used
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