A man named G........, from Chicago, who was arrested in the lower part of the city for intoxication, told me, when he was in the station house, he could remember distinctly the cop going through his pockets; when he came to himself next morning he found he was minus a diamond ring and some bills. The police had relieved him of all his money. When he called for his money he had his face punched. There have been times when by the free use of graft, inside information including secrets that are supposed to be carefully guarded by the officials in the controller’s office, tax office, corporation counsel’s office, board of education, office of the coroner and other departments, have been given away by grafters to men who reaped thousands of dollars thereby. A grafting contractor can afford to pay a dishonest municipal employe a thousand dollars, or even five thousand dollars, for the information that will enable him to secure the job to build sewers or pave streets, erect a school house or build a bridge or a reservoir. Often “fake” bids are made so as to secure the work to a ring of speculators who in the end reap millions. The new water works for this city will cost at least $250,000,000. Tammany Commissioners make fifty dollars a day. If they work twenty-four days in a month they get $1,200. That is big money to men who are only laborers in intellect! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s note: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.