224 The New York Police Force 



very greatly by what we did. The hospital sur- 

 geons found that their Monday labors were lessened 

 by nearly one-half, owing to the startling diminu- 

 tion in cases of injury due to drunken brawls; the 

 work of the magistrates who sat in the city courts 

 on Monday for the trial of the offenders of the pre- 

 ceding twenty-four hours was correspondingly de- 

 creased; while many a tenement-house family spent 

 Sunday in the country because for the first time the 

 head of the family could not use up his money in 

 getting drunk. The one all-important element in 

 good citizenship in our country is obedience to law, 

 and nothing is more needed than the resolute en- 

 forcement of law. This we gave. 



There was no species of mendacity to which our 

 opponents did not resort in the effort to break us 

 down in our purpose. For weeks they eagerly re- 

 peated the tale that the saloons were as wide open 

 as ever; but they finally abandoned this when the 

 counsel for the Liquor Dealers' Association ad- 

 mitted in open court, at the time when we secured 

 the conviction of thirty of his clients and thereby 

 brought the fight to an end, that over nine-tenths of 

 the liquor-dealers had been rendered bankrupt be- 

 cause we had stopped that illegal trade which gave 

 them the best portion of their revenue. They then 

 took the line that by devoting our attention to en- 

 forcing the liquor law we permitted crime to in- 

 crease. This, of course, offered a very congenial 

 field for newspapers like the World, which exploited 

 it to the utmost ; all the more readily since the mere 



