in the neighborhood of the theatre talking to little girls and reported
him, the officer was taken severely to task by the highest republican
authority in the city. He was reprimanded for his activity and ordered
transferred to the stockyards, eleven miles away. The policeman well
understood that this was but the first step in the process called
"breaking;" that after he had moved his family to the stockyards, in a
few weeks he would be transferred elsewhere, and that this change of
beat would be continued until he should at last be obliged to resign
from the force. His offence, as he was plainly told, had been his
ignorance of the fact that the theatre was under political protection.
In short, the young officer had naïvely undertaken to serve the public
without waiting for his instructions from the political bosses.

A flagrant example of the collusion of the police with vice is instanced
by United States District Attorney Sims, who recently called upon the
Chicago police to make twenty-four arrests on behalf of the United
States government for violations of the white slave law, when all of the
men liable to arrest left town two hours after the warrants were issued.
To quote Mr. Sims: "We sent the secret service men who had been working
in conjunction with the police back to Washington and brought in a fresh
supply. These men did not work with the police, and within two weeks
after the first set of secret service men had left Chicago, the men we
wanted were back in town, and without the aid of the city police we
arrested all of them."

When the legal control of commercialized vice is thus tied up with city
politics the functions of the police become legislative, executive and
judicial in regard to street solicitation: in a sense they also have
power of license, for it lies with them to determine the number of women
who are allowed to ply their trade upon the street. Some of these women