Meanwhile the newspapers, public bodies and private societies, to say nothing of the general community, were engaged in an intense and aggressive discussion of the situation of the city with reference to crime, heated tempers were being displayed in more than one quarter, crimination was being met by recrimination, and only such a catastrophe as the Asch building fire could divert the attention of the city from the discussion of the “crime wave” and its causes. Magistrate Corrigan’s general charges were followed by an array of specific facts and instances, presented by himself, by some of the newspapers, and by many private individuals, including social workers. It was freely alleged that Mayor Gaynor’s doctrine of “personal liberty,” and his discouragement of “needless and unjustifiable arrests,” were responsible for the demoralization of the police force, and the consequent influx of criminals of every sort. To all this Mayor Gaynor finally entered a general and emphatic denial. He praised the police force, scouted the idea of demoralization, declared that the laws were being efficiently enforced, and characterized the whole agitation as but a periodic recurrence of a long series of similar protestations. Such outcries, he said, were as regular in their coming as is the spring marble season among boys. The grand jury investigation bids fair to be thorough. Police Commissioner Cropsey has been called upon for some extended testimony, and the district attorney has declared his intention to probe the situation to the bottom. [1] From other extracts from report of this association see REVIEW for February, 1911, page 10. [2] For other information see the March REVIEW, page 24. Transcriber's Note: Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of the book. Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. The following items were changed: Changed publication title to capital letters in the first paragraph of the third article. Removed duplicate anchor to footnote [2] from subtitle. Added a missing endquote to text. Spelling corrections: ‘orignated’ to ‘originated’ … Not one of these originated in … ‘pyschopathic’ to ‘psychopathic’ … and psychopathic experts … ‘centry’ to ‘century’ … at the end of the eighteenth century. ‘physican’ to ‘physician’ … to Dr. J. B. Ransom, physician … ‘necessitious’ to ‘necessitous’ … in necessitous circumstances … End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Review, by Various