For the past four years I have devoted the Annual of the Review of Reviews to a romance based upon the leading social or political event of the year. This year I intermit the publication of the Series of Contemporary History in Fiction in order to publish a study of the most interesting and significant of all the political and municipal problems of our time. To those who may object to the substitution of a companion volume to my Chicago book for their usual annual quantum of political romance, I reply, first, that “changes are lightsome” and a novelty is attractive, and, secondly, that nothing that the wildest imagination of the romance-writer could conceive exceeds in startling and sensational horror the grim outline of the facts which are set forth in this survey of that section of “Satan’s Invisible World” which was brought to light by the Lexow Committee.

The trite old saying that “Truth is stranger than Fiction” has seldom been better exemplified than in the story of the way in which the Second City in the World has been governed, unless it be in the consequences of the resulting despair. For if the revelations made before the Lexow Committee are almost incredible, the deliberate decision of the ablest and most public-spirited Americans that there is no way of escape save by the hamstrung CÆsarism of the Charter of Greater New York is still more marvellous as a confession of the shipwreck of faith. Sin, when it has conceived, bringeth forth Death, and the corruption that rotted the administration previous to 1894 has only brought forth its natural fruit in the adoption of a bastard Bonapartism of the Second Empire as the best government for the First City in the American Republic.

The election of the first Mayor for Greater New York, which is progressing while these pages are being written, gives a special actuality and interest to this study. But its permanent value does not depend upon the issue of the plÉbiscite which has decided who will sway the destinies of the Second City of the World at the eve and on the dawn of the Twentieth Century.It will, I hope, render available to the whole English-speaking world the gist and essence of the evidence taken before the Committee appointed by the Senate of the State of New York to inquire into the Police Department of the City. This Committee, presided over by Senator Lexow, held seventy sittings in the year 1894, and ultimately published the Report of their inquiry in five stout octavo volumes of 1100 pages each. All their proceedings were public, and the New York papers published ample reports from day to day. Outside New York nothing but brief telegrams or occasional letters informed the world of what was taking place, and the final Report was never published in the British or Colonial press. Yet the lesson of the state of things revealed by the Lexow Committee was one which every great city would do well to take to heart. What New York was, London, Glasgow, or Melbourne may—nay, will certainly—become, if the citizens lose interest in the good government of their city.

When I was in New York in September, I tried in vain to purchase a copy of the Lexow Report. As for exhuming the files of the daily papers, one might as well try to resurrect Cheops. Fortunately, just as I was stepping on board the Teutonic, the five bulky volumes were handed over to me as a loan. Dr. Shaw had at the last moment succeeded in borrowing the office copy of the Report from the Society for the Prevention of Crime. It was apparently the only available set in the whole city. I deemed it well therefore to master the voluminous evidence in order to construct a readable and authentic narrative which would make this great object-lesson accessible to the world.

W. T. STEAD.

Mowbray House,
Norfolk Street, London, W.C.
November, 1897.