This expansion of federal, state, and local power, without an expansion of administrative capacity, often delegated authority to petty tyrants. At the end of his career, Comstock credited himself with more than thirty-six hundred arrests, and the destruction of 73,608 pounds of books, 877,412 obscene pictures, 8,495 photographic negatives, and 98,563 articles that encouraged immorality. He even tabulated the 6,436 indecent playing cards he destroyed, as well as the 8,502 boxes of pills and powders sold to induce abortions.
