I tried hard but failed to secure an employers' liability law and the state control of employment offices.
There was hard fighting over some of these bills, and, what was much more serious, there was effort to get round the law by trickery and by securing its inefficient enforcement.

I was continually helped by men with whom I had gotten in touch while in the Police Department; men such as James Bronson Reynolds, through whom I first became interested in settlement work on the East Side.

Once or twice I went suddenly down to New York City without warning any one and traversed the tenement-house quarters, visiting various sweat-shops picked at random.

Jake Riis accompanied me; and as a result of our inspection we got not only an improvement in the law but a still more marked improvement in its administration.

Thanks chiefly to the activity and good sense of Dr.
John H.Pryor, of Buffalo, and by the use of every pound of pressure which as Governor I could bring to bear in legitimate fashion--including a special emergency message--we succeeded in getting through a bill providing for the first State hospital for incipient tuberculosis.