and Hebrew alike, of many races and tongues,
but homes in which God is feared and His law revered, and virtue and
decency honored and exemplified, I call upon you, sir, to save these
people, who are in a very real way committed to your charge, from a
living hell, defiling, deadly, damning, to which the criminal supineness
of the constituted authorities set for the defence of decency and good
order, threatens to doom them."

The Mayor's virtual response was to put the corrupt Chief of Police in
practically complete and irresponsible charge of the force. Richard
Croker, the boss of Tammany Hall, had openly counselled violence at the
election then pending (1900), and the Chief in a general order to the
force repeated the threat. But they had reckoned without Governor
Roosevelt. He compelled the Mayor to have the order rescinded, and
removed the District Attorney who had been elected on the compact
platform "to hell with reform." The whole city was aroused. The Chamber
of Commerce formed a Committee of Fifteen which soon furnished evidence
without stint of the corruption that was abroad. The connection between
the police and the gambling dens was demonstrated, and also that the
police were the mere tools of "politics." In 237 tenements that were
investigated 290 flats were found harboring prostitutes in defiance of
law. The police were compelled to act. The "Cadets," who lived by
seducing young girls and selling them to their employer at $25 a head,
were arrested and sent to jail for long terms. They showed fight, and it
developed that they had a regular organization with political
affiliations.

The campaign of 1901 approached. Judge Jerome went upon the stump and
rattled the brass checks from the cash-register that paid for the virtue
of innocent girls, the daughters of his hearers. The mothers of the East
Side, the very Tammany women themselves, rose and denounced the devil's
money, and made their husbands and brothers go to the polls and vote
their anger.[15] The world knows the rest. The "Red Light" of the East
Side damned Tammany to defeat. Seth Low was elected mayor. Decency once
more moved into the City Hall and into the homes of the poor. Croker
abdicated and went away, and a new day broke for our harassed city.

[Footnote 15: Up to that time I wrote of Tammany as "she"; but I
dropped it then as an outrage upon the sex. "It" it is and will
remain hereafter. I am ashamed of ever having put the stigma o