Conductors of street cars are often the victims of the hold up men. Here in Chicago they invented the plan of placing the saloonkeeper in the ice chest, while the looting of the place went on. In another instance a baker was imprisoned in a hot oven. Women in their homes are thrust into closets, gagged and bound, while their houses are ransacked and their property stolen. The want of an energetic police is the cause of the prevalence of such abominable offenses as hair clipping, or the severing from the heads of young girls upon the public streets their braids of hair. One of these perverts was arrested and excused himself upon the ground that it was a mania with him, and that the temptation to cut off the braids of hair from every young girl he met, was almost irresistible. If detectives, instead of lounging around their daily haunts for drinking purposes, loafing in cigar stores, and playing the pool rooms, were mingling with the crowds upon the streets, offenses of this character would be nearly impossible, although this particular weakness seems to lead its impulsive perpetrators to less crowded thoroughfares, and selects the hours of going to and returning from school, as the most favorable parts of the day for its gratification. It may be prompted by a morbid desire, but it is none the less a serious offense, which, as yet, the criminal law has not defined, and has therefore not provided a proper penalty for its punishment. No evidence, so far as it is known, has yet been adduced to show that the braids of hair are ever sold to dealers in that article, such as wig manufacturers, etc. If such evidence should be forthcoming, the ingenuity of the average criminal for the discovery of new methods of despoliation will receive additional confirmation. One peculiar method of protection to the criminal classes is in vogue. A new thief arrives in the city; his arrival is noticed by a detective and the fact reported to headquarters. The thief is invited to visit the Chief. Upon his appearance, permission is given him to remain, provided he "does not work his game" within the city. He can plunder all the neighboring towns he may select, but the price of his remaining in security in Chicago is, that he shall be good and gentlemanly to its people. The "Safe Blowers' Union" has its home in Chicago, from which it radiates, as the spokes of a wheel, to the circumference of its limit of operations. It is a trust; a protective association. It pays for the privilege. It attacks the country bank, blows it, in the silence of the night, to pieces with dynamite if necessary, and murders if interfered with. It returns with its loot to the city, makes its dividends among its membership, police included, and awaits the pressing necessity for a renewal of its suburban raids. It is under the king's mighty shield, the king of the criminals, over whom he reigns with leniency, and whose gifts he accepts with condescension.