Nowhere and at no time, save in the England of the eighteenth century, was the underworld so populous or so popular as in the America of to-day. In life, as in letters, crime and criminals hold there a lofty place. They are the romance of the street and the tenement-house. In their adventure and ferocity there is a democratic touch, which endears them to a free people. Nor are they so far remote from the world of prosperity and respect in the cities of the United States as elsewhere. The police is a firm and constant link between criminal and politician. Wherever the safe-blowers and burglars are, there you will find stool-pigeons and squealers, {*} ready to sell their comrades for liberty and dollars. And if the policeman is the intimate of the grafter, he is the client also of the boss who graciously bestowed his uniform upon him. At chowder parties and picnics thief, policeman, and boss meet on the terms of equality imposed upon its members by the greatest of all philanthropic institutions--Tammany Hall. If you would get a glimpse into this strange state within a state, you have but to read the evidence given before the Lexow Committee {**} in 1894. It would be difficult to match the cynicism and brutality there disclosed. * A stool-pigeon is a thief in the pay of the police; a squealer is a grafter who betrays his brother. ** This strange collection of documents, a whole literature in itself, bears the prosaic title, "Investigations of the Police Department of the City of New York." In every line of this amazing testimony you may detect a contempt of human life and justice, an indifference to suffering, an eager lust after unearned dollars, which are without parallel. The persons who play their part in this austere, begrimed tragi-comedy, come for the most part from oversea, and have but a halting knowledge of the language spoken by judges and senators. Yet their very ignorance stamps their speech with authenticity, and enhances its effect. The quick dialogue is packed with life and slang. Never were seen men and women so strange as flit across this stage. Crook and guy, steerer and turner, keepers of gambling-hells and shy saloons, dealers in green-goods, {*} come forward with their eager stories of what seems to them oppression and wrong. * Forged dollar-notes.