thus obtain permission to carry on, in daylight, and at night-time, their nefarious, lecherous and disgusting crimes and orgies.

One officer gambled in a saloon with a citizen, lost his money, overpowered the citizen, recovered his lost money and then robbed his victim.

In broad daylight an officer held up a citizen and robbed him of his money and valuables. When the Chief of Police had this case called to his attention before a legislative investigating committee, he answered, “I tried that man yesterday. He got on the police department ten years ago, and he always had a reputation of being a good officer, and the other morning he had been drinking some, and, like everything else, became a little indiscreet and started out to hold up a man and got hold of a few dollars in that way, and under the impression, very likely, that he would never be discovered, and, like everybody else, with his good record in the past, he was discharged and reinstated, because many people vouched for him, and all said he was an excellent officer, but he stepped by the wayside and fell, and we had him arrested and discharged.”

Whether the many people who so generously interceded with the Chief of Police for the retention of a thief as a member of his force were that thief’s fellow pals and hold-up men, was not disclosed; but it may be said without hazard, that they were not reputable men—if they had any existence at all other than in the imagination, and as part of the bewildering policy of an incapable Chief.

Methods of levying blackmail upon other than the disreputable classes, but reaching through them, upwards and beyond them, are not only countenanced, but advised by superior officials and approved by the city’s highest executive.

On the 5th of November, 1897, a practical stranger in the city was given the following letter, signed by the Chief of Police, viz.:

This stranger had been denounced through the press as a fraud and a schemer, who had been arrested in other cities for obtaining money under false pretenses, which facts were known to the Chief of Police when his letter of recommendation was written. The stranger was to receive a commission of twenty-five per cent on all subscriptions obtained by him, and the treasurer of the fund, who was selected with the approval of the Chief, the Mayor, and his principal political satellite, ten per cent. Some $8,000 were collected under this scheme, one large railroad corporation subscribing $1,000 and a noted Board of Trade operator $500. Whence the remainder came rests in conjecture, with a well defined belief that noted gamblers, and keepers of houses of ill fame, were contributors to it.

A legislative committee’s inquiries prevented the consummation of the scheme, but, owing to the speedy departure from the city of the treasurer, the source of the remaining subscriptions could not be inquired into.

As a cover to the purposes of this scheme, it was proposed to place these collections to the credit of the Policemen’s Benevolent Association Fund of Chicago, which, by reason of the failure of a bank, whose officials are now under indictment for the misappropriation of public funds other than those of this association, had become badly impaired. This proposal followed the appointment of the legislative committee of investigation, by way of preparation to conceal the real purpose of the swindle. That association repudiated the plan.

The Chief of Police was asked by the committee of investigation whether he thought it was the proper thing for him, as Chief of Police of Chicago, “to give to a man to go out among business men, corporations and manufacturing establishments of the city a letter telling them that everything this man did and said you would be responsible for, if you knew he had been indicted and arrested in different cities of the United States for defrauding the people out of money on this same identical scheme?” He answered, “I don’t believe it.” Immediately he was asked, “Have you heard A. was arrested a number of times?” and in reply said, “I read in the newspapers that he was arrested and had trouble in Detroit.” Again he was asked whether A. had given him any information as to the number of times he had been arrested for getting money on false pretenses, and his answer was, “I can give you some information on that subject.”

These extracts from the sworn testimony of this official, speak in no commendatory manner of his sense of official responsibility. They point to a mind deadened to all sense of the duties of his position; they elevate him before his force as a conspicuous example for them to follow, in his disregard of the principles of official decency. In themselves they urge upon that force, by their silent influence, an emulation of such a blackmailing course, even though in its accomplishment the assistance of a swindler is required, and deliberately accepted.

A brother of the Chief, a member of the detective force, was frequently found in poolrooms, assisting in their management, and yet the Chief seems to have been unable to acquire the knowledge that poolrooms were running wide open throughout the city. He probably knew it as an individual. In response to a question as to his information on this subject he answered, that no particular complaints were made—“the newspaper boys often came around and said there was pool selling going on at different places,” and he presumed “if a desperate effort had been made to look that kind of thing up, we might have possibly been successful.” More open admissions of official incompetency it would, perhaps, be difficult to make, and no more flagrant instances could be cited of official degeneracy than are these extracts from the sworn testimony of a defiant and dangerous public servant.

In the attack on the Police Pension Fund, which was established under an act of the legislature for the benefit of an officer who shall have reached the age of fifty years, and who shall have served at reaching that age for twenty years on the force, then be retired with a yearly pension equal to one-half of the salary attached to the rank which he may have held for one year next preceding the expiration of his term of twenty years, or who shall have become physically disabled in the performance of his duty, there was manifested a degree of moral irresponsibility, if not of criminality, and a blind adherence to partisanship in defiance of the laws, seldom found in the history of any municipal corporation, and unmatched even by the developments of the Lexow committee of New York City, in matters of a kindred character, inquired into by that committee.

For the sake of creating vacancies in the ranks of the police force, to be filled by appointments to be made by the Chief in defiance of the civil service law, and while that law was running the gauntlet of every conceivable attack, both open and covert, which could be made upon it by every department of the city’s administration, and by none more virulently than by the Law Department, a plan was devised and put into execution whereby officers of all ranks, after years of police service and experience and in strong physical condition willing and anxious