g, an eager lust
after unearned dollars, which are without parallel. The persons who play
their part in this austere, begrimed tragi-comedy, come for the most
part from oversea, and have but a halting knowledge of the language
spoken by judges and senators. Yet their very ignorance stamps their
speech with authenticity, and enhances its effect. The quick dialogue is
packed with life and slang. Never were seen men and women so strange as
flit across this stage. Crook and guy, steerer and turner, keepers of
gambling-hells and shy saloons, dealers in green-goods, {*} come forward
with their eager stories of what seems to them oppression and wrong.

* Forged dollar-notes.

With the simplicity which knows no better they deplore their
ill-rewarded "industry," and describe their fraudulent practices as
though they were a proper means of earning bread and butter. They have
as little shame as repentance. Their only regrets are that they have
been ruined by the police or forced to spend a few barren years in the
State prison. And about them hover always detective and police-captain,
ill-omened birds of prey, who feed upon the underworld. There is nothing
more remarkable in this drama of theft and hunger than the perfect
understanding which unites the criminal lamb and the wolfish upholder of
the law. The grafter looks to his opponent for protection, and looks not
in vain, so long as he has money in his pocket. The detective shepherds
the law-breakers, whom he is appointed to arrest; he lives with them; he
shares their confidences and their gains; he encourages their enterprise
that he may earn a comfortable dividend; and he gives them up to justice
when they are no longer worth defending. No dramatist that ever lived
could do justice to this astounding situation, and it is the highest
tribute to human ingenuity that few of the interlocutors fall below
their opportunity.

And it may be admitted that New York gave, and gives, an easy chance to
policemen bent upon oppression. What can the poor, ignorant foreigners,
who throng the east side of the city, do against their brutal and
omnipotent guardians? "An impressive spectacle was presented to us one
day," reports the Committee, "in the presence of about 100 patrolmen
in uniform, who during the period of three preceding years had been
convicted by the police commissioners of unprovoked and unwarranted
assault on citizens." Still more impressive than "this exhibit of
convicte