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been exchanged for beer; and, knowing the facts, we denounced the thing as a nuisance. The paper printed testimonials from Commissioners Parker and Grant, who certified from Mulberry Street, which they had not left, that the soup was a noble Christian charity, and so thought it evened things up, I suppose. I noticed, however, that the soup ran out soon after, and I hope we have seen the last of it. We can afford to leave that to Philadelphia, where common sense appears to be drowned in it.

together. When I have told of it, let the whole wretched thing depart and be gone for good. It was after Roosevelt had gone away. That he was not there was no bar to almost daily attacks on him, under which I chafed, sitting at the meetings as a reporter. I knew right well they were intended to provoke me to an explosion that might have given grounds for annoying me, and I kept my temper until one day, when, the subject of dives being mentioned, Commissioner Parker drawled, with the reporter from the soup journal

I had it out with them at last all whispering in his ear:

"Was not-er-r-that the place whereer-r-Mr. Roosevelt went to see a show with his friend?"

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He was careful not to look in my direction, but the reporter did, and I leaped at the challenge. I waited until the Board had formally adjourned, then halted it as Mr. Parker was trying to escape. I do not now remember what I said. It would not make calm reading, I suspect. was the truth, anyhow, and came pretty near being the whole truth. Mr. Parker fled, putting his head back through the half-closed door to explain that he "only knew what that reporter told" him. In the security of his room it must have occurred to him, however, that he had another string to his bow; for at the next session Commissioner Grant moved my expulsion because I had "disturbed the Board meeting." But President Moss reminded him curtly that I had done nothing of the kind, and that ended it.

One of the early and sensational results of reform in Mulberry Street was the retirement of Superintendent Byrnes. There was not one of us all who had known him

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ings of the trade. But he made the detective service great. He chased the thieves to Europe, or gave them license to live in New York on condition that they did not rob there. He was a Czar, with all an autocrat's irresponsible powers, and he exercised them as he saw fit. If they were not his, he took them anyhow; police service looks to results first. There was that in Byrnes which made me stand up for him in spite of it all. Twice I held Dr. Parkhurst from his throat, but in the end I had to admit that the Doctor was right. I believed that, untrammeled, Byrnes might have been a mighty engine for good, and it was with sorrow I saw him go. He left no one behind him fit

to wear his shoes.

Byrnes was a born policeman. Those who hated him said he was also a born tyrant. He did ride a high horse when the fit was on him and he thought it served his purpose. So we came into collision in the early days when he was captain in Mercer Street. They had a prisoner over there with a story which I had cause to believe my rivals had obtained. I went to Byrnes and was thundered out of the stationhouse. There he was boss and it suited him to let me see it. We had not met before. But we met again that night. I went to the Superintendent of Police, who was a Republican, and, applying all the pressure of the "Tribune," which I served, got from him an order on Captain Byrnes to let me interview his prisoner. Old Mr. Walling tore his hair; said the thing had never been done before, and it had not. But I got the order

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THE TENANTS' OUTLOOK

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THE BOYS' "PLAYGROUND IN AN OLD-TIME SCHOOL

Drawn by Thomas Fogarty.

and got the interview, though Byrnes, black with rage, commanded a policeman to stand on either side of the prisoner while I talked to him. He himself stood by, glaring at me. It was not a good way to get an interview, and, in fact, the man had nothing to tell. But I had my way and I made the most of it. After that Captain Byrnes and I got along. We got to think a lot of each other after a while.

Perhaps he was a tyrant because he was set over crooks, and crooks are cowards in the presence of authority. His famous "third degree" was chiefly what he no doubt considered a little wholesome "slugging." He would beat a thief into telling him what he wanted to know. Thieves have no rights a policeman thinks himself bound to respect. But when he had to do with men with minds he had other resources. He tortured his prisoner into confession in the Unger murder case by locking him up out of reach of a human voice, or sight of a human face, in the basement of Police Headquarters, and keeping him there four days, fed by invisible hands. On the fifth he had him brought up through a tortuous way, where the tools he had used in murdering his partner were displayed on the walls as if by accident. Led into the Inspector's presence by the jailer, he was made to stand while Byrnes finished a letter. Then Byrnes turned his piercing glance upon him with a gesture to sit. The murderer sank trembling upon a lounge, the only piece of furniture in the room, and sprang to his feet with a shriek the next instant: it was the one upon which he had slaughtered his friend, all blood-bespattered as then. He sprawled upon the floor, a gibbering, horror-stricken wretch, and confessed his sin.

As in this instance, so in the McGloin murder case, the moral certainty of guilt was absolute, but the legal evidence was lacking. McGloin was a young ruffian who had murdered a saloon-keeper at a midnight raid on his place. He was the fellow who the night before he was hanged invited the Chief of Detectives to "come over to the wake; they'll have a devil of a time." For six months Byrnes had tried everything to bring the crime home to him, but in vain. At last he sent out and had McGloin and his two "pals"

arrested, but so that none of them knew of the plight of the others. McGloin was taken to Mulberry Street, and orders were given to bring the others in at a certain hour fifteen or twenty minutes apart. Byrnes put McGloin at the window in his office while he questioned him. Nothing could be got out of him. As he sat there a door was banged below. Looking out he saw one of his friends led across the yard in charge of policemen. Byrnes, watching him narrowly, saw his cheek blanch; but still his nerve held. Fifteen minutes passed; another door banged. The murderer, looking out, saw his other pal led in a prisoner. He looked at Byrnes. The Chief nodded: "Squealed, both."

It was a lie and it cost the man his life. "The jig is up, then," he said, and told the story that brought him to the gallows.

I could not let Byrnes go without a word, for he filled a large space in my life. It is the reporter, I suppose, who sticks out there. The boys called him a great faker, but they were hardly just to him in that. I should rather call him a great actor, and without being that no man can be a great detective. He made life in a mean street picturesque while he was there, and for that something is due him. He was the very opposite of Roosevelt-quite without moral purpose or the comprehension of it, yet with a streak of kindness in him that sometimes put preaching to shame. Mulberry Street swears by him to-day, even as it does, under its breath, by Roosevelt. Decide from that for yourself whether his presence there was for the good or the bad.

In writing" How the Other Half Lives" I had been at great pains not to overstate my case. I knew that it would be questioned, and was anxious that no flaws should be picked in it, for, if there were, harm might easily come of it instead of good. I saw now that in that I had been wise. The Gilder Tenement-House Committee more than confirmed all that I had said about the tenements and the schools. The Reinhardt Committee was even more emphatic on the topic of child labor. I was asked to serve on the Seventy's subcommittee on Small Parks. In the spring of 1896 the Council of Confederated Good Government Clubs appointed me

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