I am well aware that the suggestion will be ridiculed, and by no one so much as the journalist in whom the consciousness of his responsibility has not yet been evolved. But if the Journalism that Acts is to do its share in the cleansing of the Augean stable of municipal corruption, it could hardly find a more legitimate field for development than in providing a simple but effective tribunal for the purpose of dragging out of the darkness and secrecy in which they flourish those evils which can never be dealt with until they are accurately located, and brought within the range of public opinion by the searchlight of the Inquisition. [Illustration: ONE OF THE ELEVATED RAILWAYS IN GREATER NEW YORK.] [Illustration: GENERAL TRACY.] CHAPTER VI. THE PLÉBISCITE FOR A CÆSAR. The contest for the mayoralty of Greater New York, which was fought out at the polls on the 2nd of November, has been one of the most famous elections ever fought. To begin with, never before have half a million electors voted in the same day for the election of a chief magistrate. Greater New York contains more that 3,000,000 inhabitants, and 567,000 registered electors. The constituency is not more vast than the powers of the mayor are unlimited. As no chief magistrate before received the suffrages of so many electors, so no chief magistrate was ever invested with such absolute authority. Mr. Van Wyck, the new Mayor of Greater New York, for six months at least is almost as much master of New York as Napoleon III. was master of France after the _plébiscite_ which installed him at the Tuileries. The two-chambered elective council of the city has even less control over his municipal appointments than the senate and _Corps Législatif_ of the Second Empire. For so great a stake it was natural that all parties should enter their best men, and that the contest should be fought with as much energy as a Presidential Election.