REPORT OF Tar 
DIRECTOR OF THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK 
TO THE BOARD OF MANAGERS 
O the Zoological Park and its visitors the most important 
event of the year was the successful crusade against the 
throwing of waste paper and rubbish upon the walks and lawns. 
For six exasperating years the officers of the Zoological 
Park had been carrying on an unequal warfare against park 
vandals, with brief periods of success and long periods of failure. 
The trouble lay in the fact that during all that period our 
campaigns were not backed up by the Mayor, the police depart- 
ment or the courts, and with but rare exceptions similar fights 
for public decency were not made in other parks. The lessons 
inculeated in the Zoological Park were steadily lost through the 
vicious immunity that the lawless element enjoyed elsewhere. 
The laws covering the situation were ample. The root of 
all the trouble lay in the two facts that the lawless ten per cent. 
is impervious to all education and appeals to decency, and the 
average judge on the bench then felt that the throwing of a 
piece of waste paper was too trivial a matter to engage the 
attention of a court. Often it happened that policemen who 
arrested rubbish-throwers heard the verdict “discharged,” and 
a judicial reprimand addressed to themselves. Naturally, such 
treatment had the effect of paralyzing the efforts of park police- 
men. 
For at least four years it had been perfectly evident that 
the Zoological Park alone and unaided could not hold its own 
against the park vandals, and maintain a state of satisfactory 
cleanliness. Mayor Gaynor was appealed to with an urgent 
request to start the movement which alone would afford a 
remedy; but those appeals achieved no results. 
The incoming of Mayor Mitchel was regarded as an oppor- 
tunity to carry into effect a sweeping reform. When the situa- 
tion had been fully put before him he decided to take the 
initiative, and set in motion the machinery that would yield 
clean parks for Greater New York. It was decided that the 
reform movement should be started on May 1, 1915. 
