held rearwards, as the caricaturist pictures the "boodler." A newspaper thus spoke of the members of the council belonging to the party it represents. "The average ---- representative in the city council is a tramp, if not worse. He represents or claims to represent a political party having respectable principles and leaders of known good character and ability. He comes from twenty-five or thirty different wards, some of them widely separated, and when he reaches the City Hall, whether from the west, the south or the north division, he is nine cases out of ten a bummer and a disreputable who can be bought and sold as hogs are bought and sold at the stockyards. Do these vicious vagabonds stand for the decency and intelligence of the party in Chicago?" This is a picture drawn a few years ago, but it correctly sketches a number of the hold over members of the present council, and a few of the old timers re-elected. The new members of the council, one-half in number, are committed, by their ante-election pledges, to the policy of refusing the grant of privileges to individuals or corporations without compensation to the public. Whatever of benefit the public may derive from this policy, it is not quite clear that it will operate as a preventive of "boodling." The ingenuity of the "boodler" combines the cunning of the sneak thief, with the boldness of the highway robber in devising the ways and means to find and secure his "stuff." It is a matter of congratulation that the boodling species is dwindling away from the public view. How long it will remain in concealment depends upon how long the independent voter wishes to keep it concealed.