As soon as people began to look into the condition of things in the city they were horrified at what they found.

It was discovered, for example, that Alderman Schwefeldampf was an undertaker! Think of it! In a city with a hundred and fifty deaths a week, and sometimes even better, an undertaker sat on the council! A city that was about to expropriate land and to spend four hundred thousand dollars for a new cemetery, had an undertaker on the expropriation committee itself! And worse than that! Alderman Undercutt was a butcher! In a city that consumed a thousand tons of meat every week! And Alderman O'Hooligan--it leaked out--was an Irishman! Imagine it! An Irishman sitting on the police committee of the council in a city where thirty-eight and a half out of every hundred policemen were Irish, either by birth or parentage! The thing was monstrous.
So when Mr.Newberry said "It's worse than Russia!" he meant it, every word.
* * * * * Now just as Mr.Newberry and Mr.Dick Overend were finishing their discussion, the huge bulky form of Mayor McGrath came ponderously past them as they sat.

He looked at them sideways out of his eyes--he had eyes like plums in a mottled face--and, being a born politician, he knew by the very look of them that they were talking of something that they had no business to be talking about.

But,--being a politician--he merely said, "Good evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturbance.
"Good evening, Mr.Mayor," said Mr.Newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together and speaking in an ingratiating tone.

There is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest man caught in the act of speaking boldly and fearlessly of the evil-doer.
"Good evening, Mr.Mayor," echoed Mr.Dick Overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm evening, is it not ?" The mayor gave no other answer than that deep guttural grunt which is technically known in municipal interviews as refusing to commit oneself.
"Did he hear ?" whispered Mr.Newberry as the mayor passed out of the club.
"I don't care if he did," whispered Mr.Dick Overend.
Half an hour later Mayor McGrath entered the premises of the Thomas Jefferson Club, which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool room far down in the town.
"Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were playing freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy.