s
indifference, it would have been impossible to find a grand jury to
sustain the indictment. He was really brought to trial because he had
broken the implied contract with the politicians; he had devised illicit
and damaging methods to express that instinct for protecting youth and
innocence, which every man on the police force doubtless possesses. Were
this instinct freed from all political and extra legal control, it would
in and of itself be a tremendous force against commercialized vice which
is so dependent upon the exploitation of young girls. Yet the fortunes
of the police are so tied up to those who profit by this trade and to
their friends, the politicians, that the most well-meaning man upon the
force is constantly handicapped. Several illustrations of this occur to
me. Two years ago, when very untoward conditions were discovered in
connection with a certain five-cent theatre, a young policeman arrested
the proprietor, who was later brought before the grand jury, indicted
and released upon bail for nine thousand dollars. The crime was a
heinous one, involving the ruin of fourteen little girls; but so much
political influence had been exerted on behalf of the proprietor, who
was a relative of the republican committeeman of his ward, that although
the license of the theatre was immediately revoked, it was reissued to
his wife within a very few days and the man continued to be a menace to
the community. When the young policeman who had made the arrest saw him
in the neighborhood of the theatre talking to little girls and reported
him, the officer was taken severely to task by the highest republican
authority in the city. He was reprimanded for his activity and ordered
transferred to the stockyards, eleven miles away. The policeman well
understood that this was but the first step in the process called
"breaking;" that after he had moved his family to the stockyards, in a
few weeks he would be transferred elsewhere, and that this change of
beat would be continued until he should at last be obliged to resign
from the force. His offence, as he was plainly told, had been his
ignorance of the fact that the theatre was under political protection.
In short, the young officer had naively undertaken to serve the public
without waiting for his instructions from the political bosses.

A flagrant example of the collusion of the police with vice is instanced
by United States District Attorney Sims, who recently called upon the