I joined the police force when I was twenty-three years old, on January 28th, 1874. I had previously been a confectioner. I was married when I was admitted to the force. The Civil Service rules were not in operation then, neither had I to pay anything, for the practice of paying money for a position in the force had not commenced so early as 1874. I was first assigned to the 19th Precinct, then the 29th, better known as the “Tenderloin.” For three years I served as patrolman. In those years I discovered the importance of the political pull. The local politician, by his influence with the Police Commissioners and the chief police authorities, could generally make the sergeant his mouthpiece, and induce him to give preference and show favours to patrolmen who were friends and supporters of the politician. It was decidedly detrimental to discipline, but it was the principle throughout. A sergeant who was seeking promotion relied much more on his political pull than upon his record as a police officer. Senator O’Connor interrupted to ask:-- Is there any recognition of merit at all in the department as now conducted, apart from money considerations or political influence? Captain Schmittberger replied:-- To a very small extent. It is either politics or money.--Vol. v., p. 5,382. The result has been that in the last ten years the police have deteriorated. “They are more politicians than anything else” (p. 5,316). The mischief of the political pull was increased when candidates had to pay for their appointment. They felt they had purchased their positions, and were sort of independent. The system of purchase, which did not exist in 1874, gradually became so general that if men wanted to get into the department it was necessary to see one of the “go-betweens,” a set of men of whom one Charley Grant, Commissioner McClave’s secretary, was very well known. These purchase-officers made poor policemen, and they felt they had a right to more protection than the others. When they were rebuked for offences by their officers they would often defy them, basing their defiance upon the ground of political influence and power to protect them from the consequences of their act. This was especially the case with those men who belonged to political organisations, political clubs. There was the Pequod Club, for instance, a Tammany club, presided over by Police Commissioner Sheehan, which I was pressed to join, owing to the pull it would give me if I belonged to the Commissioner’s club. Several police captains belonged to it, and the tickets for the club outings, at five dollars apiece, were forced upon storekeepers and liquor dealers by the police. They also compelled all the liquor dealers in the precinct to buy Munzinger’s mineral waters, for Munzinger was secretary of the Pequod.