Exactly a week after the Fackel brought out an article about the undercover union of thieves and robbers with municipal police on the west side and publicly denounced it, Captain Aldrich from the west side discovered for himself that some of his people are actually in union with his enemies, out to drop his head off.

This war among the stick-twirlers would be very funny indeed and educational for the by-standers if it were not up to them to pay the bill.

Thieves are intentionally being given free rein, in order to get rid of a police captain.

The battle for the police officers positions, in Chicago, is still on among the newspapers.

2

The majority of the police force is an inheritance from Carter Harrison to the present administration.

The rank and file were dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, but now Chicago society with the"better" classes has elected the Republican Roche for mayor.

He is being pressed by the army of Republican job-seekers and string pullers to change the Democratic Pretoria-guard to a Republican one.

Although Roche is very willing to do so he lacks the necessary wit to effect that change. On the other side the imperiled Democratic police chiefs are not any too anxious to be beheaded by Roche's party-endeavor. On the contrary they viciously attack the mayor and his satellites indirectly whereby they have the advantage of police routine and their greater number.

3

The Republicans believes very stupidly in the face of all the dirty tricks which the Democrats play on them. It is hardly believable how poorly and ignorantly the press is being served and made use of.

The Democrats seem to know that this whole war is being fought through the press only as every philister sooner or later falls for the continuously repeated news, and finally flies dutifully into a tremendous passion.

The Democratic politic chiefs do not care about labor or money in order to publicly and systematically abuse their colleagues from the Republican wing as well as show them worthy of contempt and discredit them with all possible means.

4

Whoever followed this spectacle carefully must have noticed that all reports about the numerous crimes on the west side originated in police circles. The reader must have recognized the bold and vicious intentions from the fact that these libelous articles always started with two or three special reports about crimes supposedly committed on the west side and then carelessly changed into a report about a series of thefts in other districts where captains have their pulls, but this is done in a way that the reader still thinks he is reading about crimes on the west side only.

It is indeed remarkable that the Democratic press has discovered only now that Captain Aldrich is a convicted and sentenced although of course as yet unpunished thief and that he possesses some more dark spots on him and that his porter-nature lacks politeness.

5

It would be very fine if Chicago's citizenship should get to know all of Aldrich's crimes and diseases but why do these papers keep quiet about the many villainies on the part of the Democratic policemen, honorably grown gray in crime?