is not a single supposition in the whole string of them which has not its counterpart in definite facts for which I could furnish names, dates, and localities. These facts have been gleaned from cities as widely separated as Baltimore and San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles. But curiously enough the list of the cities from which they are gleaned does not include New York. That city, if we chose to study it, might afford us examples of all these things and of a great many more. We might tell of a time when three out of the fifteen police magistrates had been indicted, and another had but narrowly escaped. We might speak of an impressive spectacle of about one hundred policemen in uniform, each of whom during the three preceding years had been convicted of unprovoked assault on citizens amounting to crimes of assault in the second and third degree. During about the same period one hundred and eight officers of the force had been convicted of offenses amounting to crimes, of which forty-eight were felonies. There the Sunday closing law was used simply as a means of extorting blackmail from the liquor-dealers, and the whole arrangement was systematized through the liquor-dealers' association. Gambling houses and houses of prostitution were blackmailed, the detective in each ward acting as the "Captain's Collector," and being so termed by those interested. Detectives, pawnbrokers and thieves worked together in prosperous collusion for their common enrichment. The "green-goods" men received regular protection, and if victims made complaint they were treated by the police with scant courtesy, or in the words of a number of witnesses, the police "put a scare on them" and then proceeded to divide the "swag." Abortionists and other criminals also came in for the countenance of the state through its police department. Legitimate businesses were put under contribution, and innocent and defenseless persons, including women, were arrested in order that they might be blackmailed. Places on the force were so profitable that they were a matter of bargain and sale, and a captaincy was proved to have been paid for with $15,000.
Now it did not need a Lexow committee to tell the criminal
