The present system is epileptic. It works out with unspeakable cruelty to those who are suspected of crime—and their families—it results in the moral ruin of those we employ to protect us, and it is a failure. The amount of money which society expends in its war against crime is stupendous—and crime increases. All statistics from every civilized country.... But this personal narrative is not the place for me to discuss in detail my convictions in regard to criminology. *IV* The influence of the Tombs on my way of thinking was slow and cumulative, here a little and there a little. I got a more sudden insight into some of the ways of the world, some of its stupidities and pretenses, from the peculiar circumstances under which Benson and I were thrown out of the settlement. I had been there almost two years when the crash came. In this affair, I was little more than the tail of his kite. That is the fact I wish to emphasize. Benson was I think beyond any doubt, the most valuable "resident" in the Children’s House. It was not only that he gave much money into the general treasury and that he gave far more to such subsidiary enterprises as his Arbeiter Studenten Verein, all of which gave added prestige to the settlement, but also his personality was a great asset. Through his professional and social connections he was continually recruiting new supporters. And certainly to the people of the neighborhood, he was the most popular of us all. And yet to preserve certain stupid ideas of respectability, Benson was sacrificed. The Jewish population—penniless refugees from Russian massacres—had been growing rapidly in our district. They had almost entirely driven out the Germans and Irish. And as a result of their intense poverty, prostitution was becoming frightful. There were red lights all about us. To the thoughtful Jews this had become the only political issue. The machine was cynically frank in its toleration of vice. Two years before a man named Root had been elected congressman on the reform ticket. It was pretty generally known that he had used his time in office to make peace with the machine. And although he still talked of reform, he was so friendly with the enemy that they had nominated a figure-head named O’Brien. But this Democratic candidate was only for appearances, we all knew that Root was to be re-elected and that Tammany votes were promised him. Benson shared my hatred of hypocrisy. We often talked over this political tangle. "I’d like to get the evidence against him," Norman said one night. "Nothing I’d like better than to shoot some holes into his double-faced schemes."