With the patent safety switch working splendidly, the crooked fraternity knew just what to expect from 300 Mulberry Street; knew that it was, “walk up to the captain’s office and square it--get out of town and stay out for a while, or run the risk of being railroaded to Sing Sing prison.” It was a marvel. It gave the inventors and the promoters the master-key of the situation. Its intricate details earned golden gain for the Ring and prosperity for the Under World fraternity. The safety switch was unlimited in its power, it seemed. With it a subservient Police Board assisted in keeping the per cent of “rake-off” regulated, and policemen favorable to our pocket-lining were promoted at its bidding. It did heroic service for many years, and brought in Standard Oil profits, was proof against honest investigators who tried hard to break through and put its inventors and promoters in jeopardy, and was practically the only Ring to pull out of the breakers so disastrously contrived by Samuel J. Tilden, New York State’s famous governor and corrupt-ring smasher, and his fellow-reformers. The Bank Ring was indeed fortunate in escaping the dire consequences of Mr. Tilden’s efforts to clean out the cesspool of corruption then underlying the government of New York City. Those were palmy days, those days of the safety switch, when men without visible means of support flourished about town like green bay trees, and certain police officials of 300 Mulberry Street with “pulls” kept fast horses and elaborate carriages, and dined and wined themselves and friends at Delmonico’s, and sported diamonds in their shirt-fronts the size of English walnuts. How well I remember them! It was all possible while the Under World fraternity was feeding on the public and the police grafters were taking percentages from them--the larceny thief and the bank burglar. The legitimate income of these officials was a mere drop in the ocean in comparison with their private, illegitimate income,--that ever-flowing golden stream, let in at the back door of 300 Mulberry Street; that golden stream flowing from the army of crooks operating in this country from New York Bay to the Golden Gate, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, not considering a fat goose occasionally plucked from a foreign shore.