The law was not in the least a dead-letter; it was enforced, but it was corruptly and partially enforced. It was a prominent factor in the Tammany scheme of government. It afforded a most effective means for blackmailing a large portion of the liquor sellers and for the wholesale corruption of the police department. The high Tammany officials and police captains and patrolmen blackmailed and bullied the small liquor sellers without a pull, and turned them into abject slaves of Tammany Hall. On the other hand, the wealthy and politically influential liquor sellers controlled the police, and made or marred captains, sergeants, and patrolmen at their pleasure. In some of the precincts most of the saloons were closed; in others almost all were open. The rich and powerful liquor seller violated the law at will, unless he had fallen under the ban of the police or the ward boss, when he was not allowed to violate it at all. Under these circumstances the new police board had one of two courses to follow. We could either instruct the police to allow all the saloonkeepers to become law-breakers, or else we could instruct them to allow none to be law-breakers. We followed the latter course, because we had some regard for our oaths of office. For two or three months we had a regular fight, and on Sundays had to employ half the force to enforce the liquor law; for the Tammany legislators had drawn the law so as to make it easy of enforcement for purposes of blackmail, but not easy of enforcement generally, certain provisions being deliberately inserted with the intention to make it difficult of universal execution. However, when once the liquor sellers and their allies understood that we had not the slightest intention of being bullied, threatened or cajoled out of following 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 merely enforced it against the man with a pull, just as much as against the man without a pull. We refused to discriminate in favor of influential law-breakers. The professional politicians of low type, the liquor sellers, the editors of some German newspapers, and the sensational press generally, attacked us with a ferocity which really verged on insanity.