South, because there was more room to make them there. During my two
weeks in the South, at that time, mingling with all classes of people, I
never heard an unkind word against the North, and that only a little
over ten years since the close of the war. Congressional politicians
were still enlarging upon the belligerency of the South, but they had
personal designs at President making. There was no more use for Federal
military in New Orleans than there was need of them in Brooklyn. I was
the guest in New Orleans of the Hon. E.J. Ellis, many years in Congress,
and I had a taste of real Southern hospitality. It was everywhere. The
spirit of fraternity was in the South long before it reached the North.
Up to this time I had echoed Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West." For
years afterwards I changed it. In my advice to young men I said to all,
"Go South."

In the spring of 1878, however, things in Brooklyn began to look more
promising for young men and young women. I remember after closely
examining Mayor Howell's report and the Police Commissioner's report I
was much pleased. Mayor Howell was one of the most courteous and genial
men I ever knew, and Superintendent Campbell was a good police officer.
These two men, by their individual interest in Brooklyn reforms, had
gained the confidence of our tax-payers and our philanthropists. The
police force was too small for a city of 5,000,000 people. The taxes
were not big enough to afford an adequate equipment. There was a
constant depreciation of our police and excise officials in the
churches. City officials should not be caricatured--they should be
respected, or dismissed. It was about this time a mounted police
department was started in Brooklyn, and though small it was needed. What
the miscreant community of Brooklyn most needed at this time was not
sermons or lessons in the common schools, but a police club--and they
got it.

There was a political avarice in Brooklyn in the management of our
public taxes which handicapped the local government. For a long while I
had been thinking about some way of presenting this sin to my people,
when one day a woman, Barbara Allen by name, dropping in fatal illness,
was picked up at the Fulton Ferry House, and died in the ambulance. On
her arm was a basket of cold victuals she had lugged from house to
house. In the rags of her clothing were found deposit slips in the
savings banks of Brooklyn--for $20,000. The case was unique at that
time