There are sections in the city of New York where from the time the boy is old enough to recognize the power of a policeman he guides his life to curry favor with this visible expression of power. He knows almost as soon as he can talk the man who rules in the world in which he lives. He sees his playmate defy the policeman because his father is a man of power, or the friend of the man who rules the district. "Pull" is the law, all the law he recognizes. He hears discussed from his earliest years the dependence of his class on the political powers who govern, not for the good of the city, but that they may have their rights; their rights, as interpreted, being the securing of a place for a longer or shorter period at the nod of a "boss." Their district is all the city thousands of the inhabitants of these sections know. How can it be otherwise? They are never called for any purpose to any other part of the city, unless it be the cemetery. Family, friends, business all center within a score of blocks. If a distance must be traversed, it is through thoroughfares that but duplicate regions they know, all a part of the kingdom of the "boss." When the observer sees five thousand men walking behind a banner conferred on the leader of the district because every man in it who votes votes at his dictation, there comes to him a faint apprehension of what political power in the tenement-house district is. This district leader interprets all these men know of this country or its institutions. They know that he secures work for them; that he befriends them in time of trouble. He interprets Christ's doctrine to them: "I was hungry and ye gave me meat; thirsty and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." This is what the district leader does, if not in person, by proxy. Is it any wonder he can control votes? Is it any wonder that the poor, ignorant, unequipped voter should curry favor, bow to him, acknowledge his supremacy even to the law? For this the voter can break the law, and the leader secure remission of the penalty. The leader's nod has been known to guide the judge on the bench. The leader can make the innocent suffer because his power is greater than the law to which the innocent appeal. This is the moral doctrine with which we inoculate our newly made citizens, and under which the children of our overcrowded tenement houses grow up. As the boys approach manhood they know no greater privilege than to serve the man who has the power to give them place, and he begins to cultivate their acquaintance early.