The Yukon country was undergoing a good many changes. The mad rush of miners into the Mining areas had dwindled away and big companies with new hydraulic processes were crowding out the individual miners and causing them to seek new fields for exploitation. But the vultures and vampires of human society were slow in letting go their victims, and the Mounted Police had to be constantly on the watch to prevent the unwary and the foolish from being caught in their dens. That reliable officer, Inspector Wroughton, who was in command at Dawson City in 1907, says, "Dance-halls and their accompanying evils have been more or less accountable for a good deal of the existing crime. But for these institutions the wanton and the sneak-thief and the confidence man and woman would find their opportunities seriously curtailed. During the last session of the Yukon Council, I am glad to state, the ordinance licensing these places was repealed after a hard and bitter struggle. This does not mean that the evils are entirely eradicated. Our great difficulty is to get evidence. It is, however, more difficult now to carry on evil businesses." The law in the Yukon as elsewhere was fulfilling the function assigned to it in the famous words of Gladstone, "A good law is intended to make it easier for people to do right and harder for them to do wrong." That great mining frontier, with its money-mad and heterogeneous population (albeit there were many splendid people there), was at the same time the problem and the glory of the men in scarlet and gold. It was their problem because the criminal class which always makes a dead set on a frontier was determined from the outset to make the Klondike country a sort of hell on earth, and it was their glory because they prevented the thug and the outlaw from getting a foothold where the old flag flew. There also the lawless individual sought to get away to some other clime, for he said there as he said in the mountains, "These blamed Mounted Police won't give a man a chance." That was one of the biggest testimonials ever given to guardians of the law in any country.