hts.

In the rear room he found precisely what he had expected. The door
opening into the yard was unlatched. Through this door the butler had
escaped with the papers.

CHAPTER IX

The development of crime detection in the last decade has followed
closely along the line of industrial development. Just as no great
commercial establishment can long survive without systematic management,
so no great detective force can develop efficiency with chaos on the
throne.

Centralization, through closer and ever more close systematization, has
not only been the tendency, but the great phenomenon of the modern
industrial world. The same condition obtains to-day in the police
profession.

A detective force, like the New York Central Office, is managed much the
same way as a big commercial enterprise. Under modern conditions every
large mercantile establishment must depend for success on the wisdom of
its directing genius combined with the intelligent cooperation of its
army of subordinates. In similar manner, the head of a big detective
bureau directs the efforts of his men to success or failure.

Moreover, the same qualities by which a man attains commercial eminence
will win distinction for him as a detective. Intelligence, persistence,
reliability, are the foremost essentials. But these qualities, while
enabling one to achieve success in subordinate posts, seldom carry one
to commercial or professional heights; to the all-commanding peaks of
power and glory. The industrial king is monarch by reason of his ability
to give efficient direction to the labor of others. The present-day
detective king wields his scepter for precisely the same reason.

As great business campaigns are managed and directed from a desk in the
office of the president or manager, so the ceaseless war against
criminals is directed from the desk of the detective chief. For, be it
remembered that the chief function of a detective force is to obtain
evidence that will convict.

In ninety per cent. of all crimes which the police are called upon to
investigate, the identity of the guilty person is soon established. The
baffling problem is to obtain evidence, admissible in a court of law,
which will convince a jury of the defendant's guilt. Even though a
person's guilt be apparent to all, the difficulties in shattering the
protecting wall which the law erects around every accused man or woman,
are frequently insuperable. Evidence which convinces the