What he did do was just like John Young--he refused to part with a cent. It was more than he would get in a year’s “rake-off” from his different mob of grafters, so he clung to the whole reward, relinquished his shield, packed his grip, and turned his back forever on 300 Mulberry Street, in the year 1869, and became plain John Young. CHAPTER XV MY PATENT SAFETY SWITCH AND JIM IRVING I would not have the impression go abroad that I believed the New York Police Department, as a whole, or even its detective force, at the period of which I have written, were in league with professional criminals. Quite the reverse. Though the force had a great many patrolmen, plenty of commanding officers, and the Detective Bureau had its Bank Ring, which had for its backing high ranking officers in the department and tremendous political influences on the outside, all of whom conspired with the great and small fry thieves, nevertheless I aver that there were many, many patrolmen, commanding officers, and detectives, who ever put their honor away above dishonesty, often to their official undoing. I might mention a number of instances in which the honest policeman discovered the path of rectitude a mighty tortuous one to travel, while on the contrary the dishonest one seemed to be travelling a broad road to wealth and flowery ease. In the former case, the copper would have to patrol in the outlying districts in midwinter, with a diligent roundsman constantly on hand to see that the task was not shirked, as a penance for being honest, while the grafting copper would be detailed to some easy berth, where his time would be spent in the waiting room of a hotel or in the banking district, in which opportunities for stock speculation or connivance with thieves were thicker than London fog. One class of duty was designated “Goatville,” the other “Snap.”