That the county has often sadly broken down in the guardianship of life and property is a fact which has come into prominence within very recent years. As the police force of the big cities become more and more efficient the field of operation for criminals is transferred to the suburbs, to the small towns and villages and to the open country and the police problem in the rural sections takes on a semi-metropolitan aspect. Good roads, the automobile and the telephone have facilitated the business of thugs and burglars as well as of honest citizens. Said the district attorney of Niagara County, New York, recently, “Nearly every post office safe in Western New York has been robbed, and I do not now recall anybody having been convicted for these crimes. The ordinary constable or deputy sheriff can serve subpœnas and make a levy under an execution providing he is feeling well, but as a general rule he is incapable of coping with even a third-class criminal.” Numerous other equally forcible official statements of the same tenor have been collected by the New York Committee on State Police. To cope with these crimes of violence and cunning the untrained, politically selected sheriff of the typical rural county is but sadly equipped. He is a temporary elected official to begin with, unschooled in the ways of criminals and unfamiliar with any of the vast paraphernalia of investigation that go to make up a modern police system. Certain parts of the country moreover have peculiar periodical disturbances on a larger scale than criminals operate--riots, lynching parties, flood disasters, strikes. These occasions demand the temporary mobilizing of a comparatively large, well-organized and disciplined force to handle the situation with firmness and fairness. It is no place for the crude old-fashioned sheriff’s posse. At the present time it is the frequent practice on such occasions to call out the state militia. But while this organization has often doubtless rendered effective service, police duty is not its proper occupation. Every year enlistments fall far below the adequate figure because young men in business and professional life deem it obnoxious to leave their appointed tasks to do a professional policeman’s work. In the discussion of “preparedness” measures it has frequently been proposed that the militia be enlisted solely for national defense and that a special fighting force be developed for state police duty. If such a force were organized on a permanent basis it would practically relieve the sheriff and the constables from police duty.