class="i2">$2,000 worth of spurious medicines seized from W. G. Nay, 1452 Fulton street.

Detective Wooldridge has been under fire over forty times, and it is said that he bears a charmed life, and fears nothing. He has met with many hair-breadth escapes in his efforts to apprehend criminals who, by means of revolver and other concealed weapons, tried to fight their way to liberty.

He has impersonated almost every kind of character. He has in his crime hunting associated with members of the "400" and fraternized with hobos. He has dined with the elite and smoked in the opium dens; he has done everything that one expects a detective of fiction to do, and which the real detective seldom does.

Wooldridge, the incorruptible! That describes him. The keenest, shrewdest, most indefatigable man that ever wore a detective's star, the equal of Lecocq and far the superior of the fictitious Sherlock Holmes, the man who has time and again achieved the seemingly impossible with the most tremendous odds against him, the man who might, had such been his desire, be wealthy, be a "foremost citizen" as tainted money goes, has earned the title given him in these headlines. And if ever any one man earned this title it is Clifton R. Wooldridge.

It is refreshing to the citizenship of America, rich and poor alike, to contemplate the career of this wonderful man. It fills men with respect for the law, with confidence in the administration of the law, to know that there are such men as Wooldridge at the helm of justice.

The writer of this article has enjoyed intimate personal association with the great detective, both in the capacity of a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and anti-graft worker. The ins and outs of the nature of the greatest secret service worker in Chicago, Clifton R. Wooldridge, have been to me an open book. And when I call him Wooldridge, the incorruptible, I know whereof I speak.

I have seen him when all the "influences" (and they are the same "influences" which have been denounced all over the country of late) were brought to bear upon him, when even his own chiefs were inclined to be frightened, but no "influence" from any source, howsoever high, has ever availed to swerve him one inch from the path of duty.

Cannot Be Bribed.

He has been offered bribes innumerable; but in each and every instance the would-be briber has learned a very unpleasant lesson. For this man, who might be worth almost anything he wished, is by no means affluent. But he has kept his name untarnished and his spirit high through good fortune and through bad, through evil repute and good.

Wooldridge does not know the meaning of a lie. A lie is something so foreign to his nature that he has trouble in comprehending how others can see profit in falsifying. It has been his cardinal principle through life that liars always come to a bad end finally. And he has seen his healthy estimate of life vindicated, both in the high circles of frenzied finance and in the low levels of sneak-thievery.

Tremendous Amount of Work Done.

But the most remarkable thing to me about Wooldridge is the work he has done. Consider for a moment the record which heads this article. Could anything shout forth the tremendous energy of the man in any plainer terms? There are men in the same line of work with Wooldridge, who have been in the service for the same length of time, who have not made one arrest where he has made thousands.

Twenty thousand arrests in twenty years of service, a thousand arrests every year, on an average. A thousand get-rich-quick concerns, victimizing more than a million people, raided and put out of business; thirteen thousand one hundred convictions; hundreds upon hundreds of wine rooms, gambling houses, bucketshops, opium joints, houses of ill fame, turf frauds, bogus charity swindles, policy shops, matrimonial agencies, fraudulent guarantee companies, spurious medicine concerns, thieving theater agencies and mushroom banks brought to the bar of justice and made to expiate their crimes.

That is the record of the almost inconceivable work done by Clifton R. Wooldridge on the Chicago police force. The figures are almost appalling in their greatness. It is hard for the mind to comprehend how any one man could have achieved all this vast amount of labor, even if he worked twenty-four hours a day all the time. And yet it is the bare record of the "big" work done by Wooldridge, aside from his routine.

Life History of Wooldridge.

Detective Wooldridge from March, 1898, until April 5, 1907, was attached to the office of the General Superintendent of Police and worked out of his office. During that time over 1,200 letters and complaints were referred to him for investigation and action.

April 5, 1907, Detective Wooldridge was relieved of this work and transferred, and crusade and extermination of the get-rich-quick concerns ceased.

September 20, 1889, Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of twenty-five picked detectives, who were placed in charge of the suppression of hand-books and other gambling in Chicago. He remained in charge of this detail for three years.

On December 13, 1890, at the residence of Charles Partdridge, Michigan avenue and Thirty-second street, while three desperate burglars were trying to effect an entrance into the house, Detective Wooldridge espied them and in his attempt to arrest them was fired upon by the trio. One shot passed through his cap, clipping off a lock of his hair and grazing his scalp. The next shot struck him squarely in the buckle of his belt, which saved his life.

Numberless Hair-Breadth Escapes.

August 20, 1891, he met with another narrow escape at Thirtieth and Dearborn streets, while attempting to arrest Nathan Judd, a crazed and desperate colored man. Judd threw a brick at him, striking him over his left temple, and inflicting a wound two inches long.

Judd was shot through the thigh, and afterwards was sent to the house of correction for one year.

Detective Wooldridge, alone in a drenching rainstorm at 4 o'clock on the morning of June 23, 1892, at Michigan avenue and Madison street, intercepted three