If the pickpocket knew how to save his money, and could invest it well, his children might some day be but millionaires. CHAPTER IV. HOW SOME TOWNS ARE "PROTECTED." Speaking generally, there are two methods in vogue in American police circles for dealing with crime, and they may be called the compromising and the uncompromising. The latter is the more honest. In a town where it is followed, the chief of police is known to be a man who will not allow a professional thief within the city limits, if he can help it, and he is continually on watch for transient offenders. He will make no "deal" with criminals in any particular, and he takes pride in securing the conviction and punishment of all whom his men apprehend. He is naturally not liked by offenders, although they respect his consistency, and there is a local element of rowdies who consider him "an old fogey," but he is the kind of officer that makes Germany, for instance, and England, too, in a measure, so free of the class of criminals that in this country are so bold. There are some chiefs of police in the United States of this character, and they become known throughout the criminal world, but there ought to be more of them. The compromising policeman is a man of another stripe. He knows about the uncompromising "copper," has read about him and thought about him, but he excuses his disinclination to accept him as a model on the ground that, if he did, the thieves would "tear his town open." "Why, if I should antagonise this class, as you suggest," he will say to the protesting citizens, "they would come here some night and steal right and left, just out of revenge. I haven't enough men to protect the city in that way. The Town Council only give me so much to run the entire force, and I have to manage the best way I can. If you'll give me more men, I'll try to drive all the thieves out of the city." In certain instances his argument has truth in it; it sometimes happens that he has not enough men to take care of the city from the uncompromising policeman's point of view. The trouble is, however, that because he is thus handicapped he thinks that he can go a step farther, and is justified in reasoning thus: "Well, I had to pay to get this position, and if the people don't want the town protected as it ought to be, it isn't my fault, and I'm going to get out of the job all that's in it," and then begins a miserable conniving with crime.