[Illustration: A LITTLE GAME IN THE ALLEY AT NOON Many boys and young men spend their noon hour in cultivating bad habits that lead to nights of gambling; and then come crimes to get money that they may gamble more.] [Illustration: A RESTING PLACE ON THE ROAD TO CRIME. The gilded saloon is the club-room of the crook. Here he hatches his plots; here he drinks to get desperate courage to carry them out; and here he returns when the crime has been committed to drown remorse and harden conscience.] [Illustration: YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE] [Illustration: A GAME OF POKER FOR "A SMALL STAKE" This is a clangorous stop. Many a ruined man traces his downfall to the day he began in youth to "bet" a little "to make the game interesting."] [Illustration: Emma Ford (Sisters) Pearl Smith Mary White, Flossie Moore FOUR FAMOUS NEGRO WOMEN GRAFTERS As confidence workers, highway robbers, and desperate criminals they were the terror of officers and courts. Together they stole and robbed people of more than $200,000.00. They were finally run to earth and put in prison. Our author followed one of them across the continent and back.] [Illustration: THE DESTINATION OF THE GRAFTER. "The way of the transgressor is hard." "Be sure your sin will find you out." The penitentiary is full of bright men who might have been eminently successful--an honor to themselves and a blessing to mankind, if they had only heeded the old adage--"Honesty is the best policy."] [Illustration: WOOLDRIDGE'S CABINET OF BURGLAR TOOLS. At the police headquarters in Chicago, one of the most attractive curios is the above cabinet of burglar-tools and weapons taken by the author from robbers and crooks during his eighteen years of service.] [Illustration: TURNING THE BOYS FROM CRIMINAL PATHS This is a photograph of the Juvenile Court in Chicago, where boys who commit crimes are tried and sent to the Reformatory, instead of to prison with hardened criminals. The author claims that our prison system is filling the country with criminals.] [Illustration] CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE AMERICA'S FOREMOST DETECTIVE. Clifton R. Wooldridge was born February 25, 1854, in Franklin county, Kentucky. He received a common school education, and then started out in the world to shift for himself. From 1868 to 1871, he held the position of shipping clerk and collector for the Washington Foundry in St. Louis, Missouri. Severing his connection with that company, he went to Washington, D. C., and was attached to the United States Signal Bureau from March 1, 1871, to December 5, 1872. He then took up the business of railroading, and for the following nine years occupied positions as fireman, brakeman, switchman, conductor and general yard master.