Acton, now the legal head of the police force, soon showed he was the right man in the right place. Of a nervous temperament, he was quick and prompt, yet cool and decided, and relentless as death in the discharge of his duty. Holding the views of the first Napoleon respecting mobs, he did not believe in speech-making to them. His addresses were to be locust clubs and grape-shot. Taking in at once the gravity of the situation, he, after despatching such force as was immediately available to the scene of the riot, telegraphed to the different precincts to have the entire reserve force concentrated at head-quarters, which were in Mulberry Street, near Bleecker. He saw at once, to have his force effective it must be well in hand, so that he could send it out in any direction in sufficient strength to bear down all opposition. Subsequent events proved the wisdom of his policy, for we shall see, after it had been accomplished, the police never lost a battle. There being thirty-two precincts in the limits of the Metropolitan Police, a vast territory was covered. These were reached by a system of telegraph wires, called the Telegraph Bureau, of which James Crowley was superintendent and Eldred Polhamus deputy. There were three operators--Chapin, Duvall, and Lucas. A telegraph station was in each precinct--thus making thirty-two, all coming to a focus at head-quarters. These are also divided into five sections--north, south, east, west, and central. The Commissioners, therefore, sitting in the central office, can send messages almost instantaneously to every precinct of the city, and receive immediate answers. Hence, Mr. Acton was a huge Briareus, reaching out his arms to Fort Washington in the north, and Brooklyn in the south, and at the same time touching the banks of both rivers. No other system could be devised giving such tremendous power to the police--the power of instant information and rapid concentration at any desired point. That it proved itself the strong right arm of the Commissioners, it needs only to state, that during the four days of the riot, between five and six thousand messages passed over the wires, showing that they were worked to their utmost capacity, day and night. The more intelligent of the mob understood this, and hence at the outset attempted to break up this communication, by cutting down the poles on Third Avenue. This stopped all messages to and from the precincts at Fort Washington, Manhattanville, Harlem, Yorkville, and Bloomingdale, as well as with the Nineteenth Precinct. But fortunately, the orders to these had passed over the wires before the work was completed. Subsequently, the rioters cut down the poles in First Avenue, in Twenty-second Street, and Ninth Avenue, destroying communication between several other precincts.