The press in its first pen picture of the stirring scene drew a significant distinction. Those within the ball room who had successfully stormed the doors and clawed their way into the weltering pulp of figures were identified as "a distinguished audience of society women, welfare workers, civic leaders and citizens come to lend their moral support to the great crusade." Those who had failed in their efforts to gain entrance and who clung with patient heroism to the corridor, the lobby downstairs and even the boiling pavements outside, were dismissed scornfully as "a crowd of the morbidly curious, hungry for the sensational details promised by the investigators." At ten o'clock the Commission itself arrived. The perspiring police opened a passage through the throng and the commission filed to its place at the table waiting at the end of the room. Newspaper photographers immediately leaped into concerted action. The boom and smoke of flashlights arose. Delays and preliminaries followed. The room grew terrifically hot. Collars began to wilt, faces to turn red, feet to burn. But the delays continued. It was impossible to find out why there was delay. The crowd grew impatient. A racket of voices stuffed the room. Something had gone wrong ... why didn't they start ... they weren't doing anything ... what were they waiting for ... the public was grumbling. As a matter of fact the commissioners were playing for time. A species of stage fright had overcome them. Each of them had arrived filled with a sense of high purpose and benign power. They were men upon whom the burden of lifting an age-old blot from the face of civilization had fallen. They had felt no hesitancy in the matter. They were going to tackle the situation like Americans--red-blooded Americans in whose heart burned the unfaltering light of idealism. There was going to be no shilly-shallying, no highfalutin theorizings. They were going to the bottom of this matter without fear or favor. They were going to find out just why girls went wrong and, having found this out, they were going to remove the cause, or causes if there were more than one, and thus put an end to immorality--at least in the great commonwealth of Illinois. They were ten undaunted crusaders inspired with the unfaltering consciousness of their country's power and rectitude. In fact, it was not the Basine Commission which pushed through the throng but the Tradition of the United States, the Revered Memory of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Nathan Hale, the Army that had never been licked, the Government of the People, by the People and for the People, that was better than any other government on the face of the earth. These walked behind the policemen through the throng.