So much for business. Let us look at the law. The most lucrative practice is that of an attorney who protects great corporate interests among these breakers. He needs but one client; he gets hundreds. The mind of the average lawyer makes the same unconscious allowance for bribery as that of the business man. Moreover, we cannot overlook the cases of simple old-fashioned bribery to which the masses of capital give rise. In a political emergency any amount of money is forthcoming immediately, and it is given from aggregations of capital so large that the items are easily concealed in the accounts. Bribery, in one form or another, is part of the unwritten law. It is atmospheric; it is felt by no one. The most able men in the community believe that society would drop to pieces without bribery. They do not express it in this way, but they act upon the principle in an emergency. A leader of the bar, at the behest of his Wall Street clients, begs the reform police board not to remove Inspector Byrnes, who is the Jonathan Wild of the period. The bench is fairly able. But many of the judges on the bench have paid large campaign assessments in return for their nominations; others have given notes to the bosses. This reveals the exact condition of things. In a corrupt era the judges pay cash. Now they help their friends. The son or the son-in-law of a judge is sure of a good practice, and referees are appointed from lists which are largely dictated by the professional politicians of both parties. It would require an encyclopædia to state the various simple devices by which the same principle runs through every department in the life of the community. Such an encyclopædia for New York city would be the best picture of municipal misgovernment in the United States during the commercial era. But one main fact must again be noted: this great complex ring is held together by the two campaign funds, the Tammany Hall fund and the Republican fund. They are the two power houses which run all this machinery. So far as human suffering goes, the positive evils of the system fall largely on the poor. The rich buy immunity, but the poor are persecuted, and have no escape. This has always been the case under a tyranny. What else could we expect in New York? The Lexow investigation showed us the condition of the police force. The lower courts, both criminal and civil, and the police department were used for vote-getting and for money-getting purposes. They were serving as instruments of extortion and of favoritism. But in the old police courts the foreigner and the honest poor were actually attacked. Process was issued against them, their business was destroyed, and they were jailed unless they could buy off. This system still exists to some extent in the lower civil courts.