The New York Police Force 223 



understood that we had not the slightest intention 

 of being bullied, threatened, or cajoled out of follow- 

 ing the course which we had laid down, resistance 

 practically ceased. During the year after we took 

 office the number of arrests for violation of the 

 Sunday liquor law sank to about one-half of what 

 they had been during the last year of the Tammany 

 rule; and yet the saloons were practically closed, 

 whereas under Tammany most of them had been 

 open. We adopted no new methods, save in so far 

 as honesty could be called a new method. We did 

 not enforce the law with unusual severity ; we mere- 

 ly enforced it against the man with a pull, just as 

 much as against the man without a pull. We re- 

 fused to discriminate in favor of influential law- 

 breakers. The professional politicians of low type, 

 the liquor-sellers, the editors of some German news- 

 papers, and the sensational press generally, attacked 

 us with a ferocity which really verged on insanity. 

 We went our way without regarding this opposi- 

 tion, and gave a very wholesome lesson to the effect 

 that a law should not be put on the statute books if 

 it was not meant to be enforced, and that even an 

 excise law could be honestly enforced in New York 

 if the public officials so desired. The rich brewers 

 and liquor-sellers, who had made money hand over 

 fist by violating the excise law with the corrupt con- 

 nivance of the police, raved with anger, and every 

 corrupt politician and newspaper in the city gave 

 them clamorous assistance; but the poor man, and 

 notably the poor man's wife and children, benefited 



