was compelled to say that he saw no remedy for the sad state of affairs which he described as existing in these six different cities. The testimony from all sources and periods since 1840 goes to establish the prevalence of municipal corruption and misgovernment. Here is Ostrogorski, referring to the year 1872 and succeeding years: “Almost all the cities whose population exceeded one hundred thousand, or even a lesser figure, had their Rings. In the course of these last years, many great cities, such as St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, added new pages of disgrace to the history of municipal corruption carried on under the flag of political parties.” (_Democracy and Political Parties in the United States_, pp. 84, 85.) Another writer (J. B. Miller) states that the debts of the cities of the Union rose in the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 from about $100,000,000 to $682,000,000; from 1860 to 1875 the increase of debt in our eighteen largest cities was 270 per cent; the increase of taxation was 362 per cent; whereas the increase in taxable valuation was but 157 per cent and in population but 70 per cent. In 1883 the late Andrew D. White wrote as follows: “I wish to deliberately state a fact easy of verification--the fact that whereas, as a rule, in other civilized countries municipal Governments have been steadily improving until they have been made generally honest and serviceable, our own, as a rule, are the worst in the world, and they are steadily growing worse every day.” (_Message of Nineteenth Century to Twentieth._)