We went our way without regarding this opposition, and gave a very wholesome lesson to the effect that a law should not be put on the statute books if it was not meant to be enforced, and that even an excise law could be honestly enforced in New York if the public officials so desired. The rich brewers and liquor sellers, who had made money hand over fist by violating the excise law with the corrupt connivance of the police, raved with anger, and every corrupt politician and newspaper in the city gave them clamorous assistance; but the poor man, and notably the poor man’s wife and children, benefited very greatly by what we did. The hospital surgeons found that their Monday labors were lessened by nearly one half, owing to the startling diminution 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 preceding twenty-four hours was correspondingly decreased; 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 enforcement 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 repeated the tale that the saloons were as wide open as ever; but they finally abandoned this when the counsel for the Liquor Dealers’ Association admitted 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 because 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 enforcing the liquor law we permitted crime to increase. 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 reiteration of the falsehood tended to encourage criminals, and so to make it not a falsehood. For a time the cry was not without influence, even with decent people, especially if they belonged to the class of the timid rich; but it simply wasn’t true, and so this bubble went down stream with the others. For six or eight months the cry grew, first louder, then lower; and then it died away. A commentary upon its accuracy was furnished toward the end of our administration; for in February 1897, the Judge who addressed the grand jury of the month was able to congratulate them upon the fact that there was at that time less crime in New York relatively to the population than ever before; and this held true for our two years’ service.