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A RESTING PLACE ON THE ROAD TO CRIME.

The gilded saloon is the club-room of the crook. Here he hatches his plots; here he drinks to get desperate courage to carry them out; and here he returns when the crime has been committed to drown remorse and harden conscience.

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

A GAME OF POKER FOR "A SMALL STAKE"

This is a clangorous stop. Many a ruined man traces his downfall to the day he began in youth to "bet" a little "to make the game interesting."

Emma Ford (Sisters) Pearl Smith

Mary White, Flossie Moore

FOUR FAMOUS NEGRO WOMEN GRAFTERS

As confidence workers, highway robbers, and desperate criminals they were the terror of officers and courts. Together they stole and robbed people of more than $200,000.00. They were finally run to earth and put in prison. Our author followed one of them across the continent and back.

THE DESTINATION OF THE GRAFTER.

"The way of the transgressor is hard." "Be sure your sin will find you out." The penitentiary is full of bright men who might have been eminently successful—an honor to themselves and a blessing to mankind, if they had only heeded the old adage—"Honesty is the best policy."

WOOLDRIDGE'S CABINET OF BURGLAR TOOLS.

At the police headquarters in Chicago, one of the most attractive curios is the above cabinet of burglar-tools and weapons taken by the author from robbers and crooks during his eighteen years of service.

TURNING THE BOYS FROM CRIMINAL PATHS

This is a photograph of the Juvenile Court in Chicago, where boys who commit crimes are tried and sent to the Reformatory, instead of to prison with hardened criminals. The author claims that our prison system is filling the country with criminals.

CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE
AMERICA'S FOREMOST DETECTIVE.

Clifton R. Wooldridge was born February 25, 1854, in Franklin county, Kentucky. He received a common school education, and then started out in the world to shift for himself. From 1868 to 1871, he held the position of shipping clerk and collector for the Washington Foundry in St. Louis, Missouri. Severing his connection with that company, he went to Washington, D. C., and was attached to the United States Signal Bureau from March 1, 1871, to December 5, 1872. He then took up the business of railroading, and for the following nine years occupied positions as fireman, brakeman, switchman, conductor and general yard master.

When the gold fever broke out in the Black Hills in 1879, Mr. Wooldridge along with many others went to that region to better his fortune. Six months later he joined the engineering corps of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad and assisted in locating the line from Canon City to Leadville, as well as several of the branches. The work was not only very difficult, but very dangerous, and at times, when he was assisting in locating the line through the Royal Gorge in the Grand Canon of the Arkansas, he was suspended from a rope, which ran from the peak of one cliff to the other, with his surveying instruments strapped to his back. This gorge is fifty feet wide at the bottom and seventy feet wide at the top, the walls of solid rock rising three thousand feet above the level of the river below. The work was slow and required a great deal of skill, but it was accomplished successfully.

Mr. Wooldridge went to Denver in 1880 and engaged in contracting and mining the following eighteen months. He then took a position as engineer and foreman of the Denver Daily Republican, where he remained until May 29, 1883. The following August he came to Chicago and took a position with the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway. In 1886, he severed his connection with the railroad and founded the "Switchman's Journal." He conducted and edited the paper until May 26th, when he was burned out, together with the firm of Donohue & Henneberry at the corner of Congress street and Wabash avenue, as well as many other business houses in that locality, entailing a total loss of nearly $1,000,000. Thus the savings of many years were swept away, leaving him penniless and in debt. He again turned his attention to railroading and secured a position with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad and had accumulated enough money to pay the indebtedness which resulted from the fire, when the great strike was inaugurated on that road in February, 1888. The strike included the engineers, firemen and switchmen, and continued nearly a year. On October 5th of that year Mr. Wooldridge made application for a position on the Chicago police force, and having the highest endorsements, he was appointed and assigned to the Desplaines Street Station. It was soon discovered that Wooldridge as a police officer had no superiors and few equals. Neither politics, religion, creed, color, or nationality obstructed him in