The appointment of a comptroller and corporation counsel acceptable to the public, both being men of sterling integrity, and known ability, is merely a partial promise of reform. The new comptroller is a worthy successor to the deceased Waller, while the new corporation counsel takes his office, with a reputation for probity and legal acumen which are guaranties that neither will be used in an attack upon the people's laws. But the police department and the public works department are still under the same direction. They give no promise of departing from the protection of criminals on the one hand, nor the illegal letting of contracts on the other. Both of these are inviting fields for the Baxter committee to explore, and when they shall have thoroughly done so, if they shall turn their attention to county affairs, they will probably find pastures just as prolific of the rankest of weeds. The Baxter committee began its hearings on the 18th day of May, 1899. Its opening witness confirmed the truth of many of the facts set forth in these pages. He paid protection money for keeping a gambling house, until the demands for a contribution to a campaign fund became too exacting, when he was "told he had better quit." "As an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," said the witness: "I quit." He testified that gambling was going on everywhere a few days before the committee began its work, named a number of the resorts, and related some of his losses in a few of the games in which, although a professional gambler, he was "skinned." Officers were found in them, and protection to the games openly boasted of. The club organization, it develops, is the gambling idea of evading the laws, the theory being that none can gamble unless they are members. The practice seems, however, to be that every man is a member who will not squeal. Houses of disrepute were visited, and the indecencies alluded to in foregoing pages witnessed by the sergeant-at-arms of the committee. His testimony in this respect was too realistic for publication. A member of a recent grand jury submitted a list of all night saloons he had visited, and found doing business, between the hours of one and five o'clock in the morning. The list contained the names of forty-six saloons, located on eleven different streets. His information was not as startling as was the fact that his joint feat of pedestrianism and absorption of drink is, perhaps, unequalled in sporting or drinking records. He drank in each of the places visited--total drinks, forty-six in four hours. Length of route covered four miles; width, about one-half mile; square miles traversed--two! Can any sprinter, carrying the same weights, surpass this achievement?