If this committee is wise it will not confine its efforts to ascertaining how the city government is managed. It will command public approval if it will extend its inquiries into the affairs of the county government as well. This the community will demand; with less it will not be satisfied. The great mass of both parties is concerned with what will be of the most advantage to good government, not with what will be to the greatest advantage of either party. Hence, if this inquiry has in view a partisan purpose its sessions will merely reproduce tales of the street familiar to the ears of the people, and with which the legislature has been familiar for a decade. To associate these crimes and debaucheries with one administration will in one respect be unfair, because they have progressed under other administrations as well, but it can emphasize the one great and astonishing truth, that never in the history of the city has a police force been permitted to become the bed-fellow of these monstrous evils, to protect them and contribute to their overwhelming power, in such a shameless, openhanded and defiant manner as it has in the past two years, as it is still permitted to do, and as it will probably be permitted to do, for the next two years. That committee will find nothing in these pages unknown to the observing citizen. The great mass of the people read and forget. These evils are hinted at herein, and gathered together. They may impress those who are unaccustomed to taking notes of passing events. That the growth of crime in Chicago, and the prevalence of bestiality is not generally believed by the majority of its people is a self-evident proposition. It would be an insult to their intelligence and virtue to assert they knew the facts. It is not a criticism of their intelligence to say they do not know the facts. It is rather to their credit that in the pursuit of their business, the care of their homes, and the cultivation of their morals, they judge the great community in which they live by their own standard, and firmly believe that as they know themselves to be good citizens, they believe their fellow men are likewise good citizens. While they rest in this conviction vice is eternally at work, immorality undermining and crime attacking the power of government, capturing one and then the other of its strongholds, until today the criminal classes constitute the balance of power in every city election, and can handle it as they may choose, by the mere concentration of the voting strength of the keepers of eight thousand saloons and their hangers on.