The New York Police Force 217 



mailed has a direct interest in paying the black- 

 mailer, and it is not easy to get information about 

 it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to most of 

 the blackmail by the simple process of rigorously 

 enforcing the laws, not only against crime, but 

 against vice. 



It was the enforcement of the liquor law which 

 caused most excitement. In New York we suffer 

 from the altogether too common tendency to make 

 any law which a certain section of the community 

 wants, and then to allow that law to be more or less 

 of a dead letter if any other section of the commu- 

 nity objects to it. The multiplication of laws by the 

 Legislature, and their partial enforcement by the 

 executive authorities, go hand in hand, and offer 

 one of the many serious problems with which we are 

 confronted in striving to better civic conditions. 

 New York State felt that liquor should not be sold 

 on Sunday. The larger part of New York City 

 wished to drink liquor on Sunday. Any man who 

 studies the social condition of the poor knows that 

 liquor works more ruin than any other one cause. 

 He knows also, however, that it is simply imprac- 

 ticable to extirpate the habit entirely, and that to at- 

 tempt too much often merely results in accomplish- 

 ing too little; and he knows, moreover, that for a 

 man alone to drink whiskey in a bar-room is one 

 thing, and for men with their families to drink light 

 wines or beer in respectable restaurants is quite a 

 different thing. The average citizen, who doesn't 

 think at all, and the average politician of the baser 

 10 VOL. I. 



