Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/446

 43 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

turned into allies of vice and crime, as may be illustrated from almost any of the large American cities in the relation existing between the police force and the gambling and other illicit life. The officers are often flatly told that the enforcement of an ordi- nance which the better element of the city has insisted upon passing is impossible; that they are expected only to control the robbery and crime that so often associate themselves with vice. As Mr. Wilcox has pointed out in The American City, public sentiment itself assumes a certain hypocrisy, and in the end we have "the abnormal conditions which are created when vice is protected by the authorities;" in the very worst cases there develops a sort of municipal blackmail in which the administra- tion itself profits by the violation of law. The officer is thor- oughly confused by the human element in the situation, and his very kindness and human understanding are that which leads to his downfall.

There is no doubt that the reasonableness of keeping the saloons in lower New York open on Sunday was apparent to the policemen on the East Side force long before it dawned upon the reform administration, and yet that the policemen were allowed to connive at law-breaking was the cause of their corruption and downfall.

In order to meet this situation, there is almost inevitably developed a politician of the corrupt type so familiar in American cities, who has become successful because he has made friends with the vicious. The semi-criminal, who are constantly brought in contact with administrative government, are naturally much interested in its operations, and, having much at stake, as a matter of course attend the primaries and all the other election processes which so quickly bore the good citizen whose interest in them is a self-imposed duty. To illustrate : It is a matter of much moment to a gambler whether there is to be a " wide-open town " or not ; it means the success or failure of his business ; it involves not only the pleasure, but the livelihood of all his friends. He naturally attends to the election of the alderman, and to the appointment and retention of the policeman ; he is found at the caucus "evi/ry time," and would be much amused if he were praised for the