The Mayor recently congratulated the Common Council in these words, viz: "The report of the General Superintendent of Police contains assurance for all classes of citizens that the efficiency, vigilance and zeal that have characterized this department will permit them to pursue their avocations without fear of being robbed and assaulted by long and short men. One need not be exceedingly observant to note that with the approach of winter comes an annual outbreak of crime. We all noticed evidences of such a visitation at the advent of the winter just ended, but it should not be allowed to pass without comment that criminality rarely showed itself during last fall when it was crushed out with a suddenness and success that ought to be regarded with pride and satisfaction by every Chicagoan. There has been no evidence of crime through the recent year as in former years; the criminals came in the fall, but they were severely taught that Chicago was an unhealthy clime for them, with the result that they were wise enough not to linger here long." This statement, so self-satisfying to the official who made it, so totally false in fact, so dangerous to the welfare of the people, and so flippantly interwoven into a public document by one who either knew the contrary to be the truth, or who knowingly used his official position for the suppression of truth, if not of crime, is contradicted by the disclosures made by every organization devoted to the purification of the public morals, the betterment of civil administration, and the eradication of the bestial vices so freely and openly flaunted in the faces of a busy and apparently indifferent people.