The first Mayor to act under this charter amendment was Seth Low, who was elected, in 1881, over Howell by a vote of 45,434 to 40,937.[42] Low, who was born in Brooklyn, where his family had occupied a distinguished position, and had graduated from Columbia College in 1870, afterward entering the business house of his father, was in his thirty-second year when elected to office, a circumstance which, added to the novelty of the conditions under which his administration must work, did not fail to attract special attention throughout the country. In his first message (January, 1882) Low touched upon the important question of the appointing power:-- "The manifest purpose of the act is to make the Mayor the responsible head of the city government, and to secure a homogeneous government by laying upon each Mayor the necessity of making his appointments at the beginning of his term. To accomplish this purpose the act does some things by direct provision and some things by implication. It provides, in section I, that the terms of office of certain specified officers shall expire on the first of February, 1882. It then provides, in section 6, that 'after the first day of January, 1882, the Mayor of the city of Brooklyn shall have sole and exclusive power to appoint the successor of any commissioner or other head of department (except the department of finance and the department of audit), or of any assessor or member of the board of education of said city, when the terms of such officers shall respectively expire, or as by law may then or thereafter be required to be appointed.' "There are certain officers in the city whose terms of office expired some time in the year 1881, to wit: The corporation counsel, the city treasurer, the collector of taxes, and the registrar of arrears, and to these officers the charter amendment makes no distinct reference. The reason that the present incumbents hold over is that, by section 5 of that amendment, all power to appoint during 1881 was taken away from the Mayor and Common Council, where it formerly resided, without being lodged anywhere else, except that the sole power of filling vacancies during 1881 was lodged with the Mayor. The evident purpose of this provision was to place the appointment of the successors to the present incumbents of these offices in the hands of the Mayor to be elected by the people in 1881. So much is clear; but it leaves two points uncertain: First, when are the successors to the present incumbents to be appointed? Second, when appointed, is it for the balance of an unexpired term, or for two years?