The office of the recorder of deeds is one of the most important in the county affairs. Generally speaking it is well conducted, although its records are not as presentable to the eye as are the books of a first-class mercantile firm. Female labor is employed mostly in recording, i. e., spreading an instrument at large upon the records, while male labor keeps up the tract books, indices, etc. The employes of both sexes are favorites of political bosses. The abstract branch of the business of this office is a sublime failure. For years it has cost the county a large sum of money to make good the deficiency--expenses largely exceeding earnings. Its abstracts cannot compete with those of private corporations, which employ experts in that business, and pay them in proportion to their ability, merit alone being their recommendation. The abstract makers employed by the county are shiftless and incompetent. The Torrens system, or the registration of titles, will, in time, but not for many years to come, supersede the abstract system, but not until the public shall have gained more confidence in its merits than it has yet acquired in recorder's abstracts of title. It was not the purpose of these pages to pursue inquiry into the corruption existing in both the municipal and county governments. The primary intent was to refer to the vices and crimes which prevail by reason principally of police partnership in their joint proceeds. Both governments are corrupt, and appear to be so because the people consent they shall be corrupt. The lessons the public learn from day to day, through the columns of the press, are forgotten. When election day approaches a revival of the facts through the press is then charged to political trickery, and its charges of maladministration are disregarded as being invented for party purposes. The press condemns while the evils are prominent, then it condones, and becomes the subservient and truculent supporter of the men who permitted vice and debauchery to attain its stalwart growth. The people believe there is a trust press, banded together to obtain favors through school leases, bank deposits of public funds and personal appointments in return for services to be rendered their municipal benefactors. The only non-member of the trust is the organ of the street car corporations and such exposes of villainy as it may present are set down as means to an end--the effort to obtain public privileges without compensation to the city. Newspapers, therefore, in municipal affairs no longer lead public opinion. They cannot again become its leaders until they free themselves from the suspicion of conserving their own interests by the sacrifice of those of the public. The greatest of them delivered but feeble blows during the recent mayoralty campaign, while the lighter weights, who were fighting for a candidate for renewed honors, had been for two years most unmercifully pounding him for his