There is of course crime in San Francisco as in all other cities.  Indeed crime is universal, whether in the Orient or the Occident.  The Chief of Police Wittman accounts for highway robbery, to the extent in which it prevails, from the fact that San Francisco is a garrison city.  Here are numerous recruits and discharged soldiers, and, as a seaport, it draws to itself the scum and offscourings of all nations, Hindoos, Chinese, Malays, and all other kinds of people.

The police force is hardly adequate to patrol the entire city.  It consists only of 589 men all told, and they are fine, manly looking guardians of the law, always ready to do their duty, always courteous to strangers, answering all questions intelligently.  It is claimed, moreover, that the criminal element of the country drifts to San Francisco in the winter on account of the climate and also through the attractions of the racetrack.  The police also find that the places where poker-games are played are a rendezvous for criminals.  In 1887 and 1888 there was an outbreak of highway robbery, but the grand jury acted promptly in the matter and the courts soon suppressed it.  Property and life therefore are jealously guarded in the City of the Golden Gate, and bad characters who go thither to prey on the public soon get their deserts.  In this respect then San Francisco is a desirable place in which to live.

One evening in company with a party of friends, Rev. Dr. Ashton of Clean, N.Y., Rev. Dr. Reynold Marvin Kirby of Potsdam, N.Y., Rev. Clarence Ernest Ball of Alexandria, Va., Rev. Henry Sidney Foster of Green Bay, Wis., the Rev. William Barnaby Thorne of Marinette, Wis., and Doctor Robert J. Gibson, surgeon in the United States Army, stationed at San Francisco, I visited the police headquarters, situated on the east side of Portsmouth Square.  This is a large building of several stories with numerous offices.  The chief in his office on the main floor, on the right hand of the entrance, received us courteously and assigned to us a detective according to an arrangement previously made with Ashton.  In the office were portraits of police commissioners and the chiefs and others who had been connected with the department for many years.  Entering an elevator we were soon on the topmost floor where were the cells in which prisoners just arrested and waiting for trial were confined.  The doors of the cells, all of iron, were opened or closed by moving a lever.  It was now about 9:30 P.M., and officers were bringing in such persons as had been arrested for theft, for assault and battery, for drunkenness and other kinds of evil doing.  Towards daybreak the cells are pretty well filled, but now they were nearly empty.  How true His words who knows what is in man.  “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil!”