Nor was it the district alone which talked of the speech.  Perhaps the residents of it made their feelings most manifest, for they organized a torchlight procession that night, and went round and made Peter an address of thanks.  Mr. Dennis Moriarty being the spokesman.  The judge shook hands with him after the trial, and said that he had handled his case well.  The defendant’s lawyer told him he “knew his business.”  A number of the reporters sought a few words with him, and blended praise with questions.

The reporters did far more than this, however.  It was the dull newspaper season, and the case had turned out to be a thoroughly “journalistic” one.  So they questioned and interviewed every one concerned, and after cleverly winnowing the chaff, which in this case meant the dull, from the gleanings, most of them gave several columns the next morning to the story.  Peter’s speech was printed in full, and proved to read almost as well as it had sounded.  The reporters were told, and repeated the tales without much attempt at verification, that Peter had taken the matter up without hope of profit; had paid the costs out of his own pocket; had refused to settle “though offered nine thousand dollars:”  had “saved the Dooley children’s lives by sending them into the country;” and “had paid for the burials of the little victims.”  So all gave him a puff, and two of the better sort wrote really fine editorials about him.  At election time, or any other than a dull season, the case would have had small attention, but August is the month, to reverse an old adage, when “any news is good news.”

The press began, too, a crusade against the swill-milk dealers, and the men who had allowed all this to be possible.  “What is the Health Board about, that poison for children can be sold in the public streets?” “Where is the District Attorney, that prosecutions for the public good have to be brought by public-spirited citizens?” they demanded.  Lynx-eyed reporters tracked the milk-supplies of the city, and though the alarm had been given, and many cows had been hastily sent to the country, they were able to show up certain companies, and print details which were quite lurid enough, when sufficiently “colored” by their skilful pens.  Most residents of New York can remember the “swill-milk” or “stump-tail milk” exposures and prosecutions of that summer, and of the reformation brought about thereby in the Board of Health.  As the details are not pleasant reading, any one who does not remember is referred to the daily press, and, if they want horrible pictures, to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.  Except for the papers, it is to be questioned if Peter’s case would have resulted in much more than the punishment of the man actually convicted; but by the press taking the matter up, the moment’s indignation was deepened and intensified to a degree which well-nigh swept every cow-stable off the island, and drove the proper officials into an activity leading to great reforms.