Her story is a sad commentary on our system of justice. The court did not care to offend a group of wealthy men. The press did not dare to. The only way to get justice for this girl was by appealing to the highest court—the power of money. It is always hard for me to write about our method of dealing with crime in restrained and temperate language—the whole system is too utterly vicious. I had not been many weeks in the Tombs before I was guilty of contempt of court. Four of the five judges in general sessions were machine men. It was rare that their judgments were influenced by their political affiliations; in the great majority of the cases they were free to dispense what happened to strike them as justice. It is simpler for the organization to "fix" things in the police courts where there are no juries. But once in a while a man would come up to us who "had a friend." The "Old Man" on Fourteenth Street would send down his orders and one of these four judges would arrange the matter. The impressive thing about it was the cynical frankness. Everybody knew what was happening. The fifth judge, O’Neil, was a Scotchman. He was said to be—and I believe was—incorruptible. He had been swept into office on a former wave of reform, and had no dealings with the machine. But he was utterly unfit to be on the bench. A few weeks after I was sworn in, I saw a phase of his character which was worse than "graft." A man was brought before him for "assault"—a simple exchange of fisticuffs. In general such cases are treated as a joke. Two men have a fight—then they race to the police station. The one who gets there first is the complainant, the slower footed one is the defendant. Each brings a cloud of witnesses to court to swear that the other was the aggressor. It is hopeless to try to place the blame. The penal code fixes a maximum sentence of one year and five hundred dollars fine, but unless some especial malice has been shown, the judges generally discharge the prisoner with a perfunctory lecture or, at most, give them ten days. This man had an especially good record. He had worked satisfactorily for several years in the same place, his wife and her three small children were entirely dependent upon his earnings. O’Neil skimmed over his recommendations listlessly, until his eye caught a sentence which told the nature of the man’s employment. He stiffened up with a jerk. "Are you a janitor?" he thundered. "Yes, your honor."