“Sales of monopolies in the use of public thoroughfares; systematic jobbing of contracts; enormous abuses of patronage; enormous overcharges for necessary public works. Cities have been compelled to buy land for parks and places because the owners wished to sell them; to grade, pave and sewer streets without inhabitants in order to award corrupt contracts for the works; to purchase worthless properties at extravagant prices; to abolish one office and create another with the same duties, or to vary the functions of offices for the sole purpose of redistributing official emoluments; to make or keep the salary of an office unduly high in order that its tenant may pay largely to the party funds; to lengthen the term of office in order to secure the tenure of corrupt or incompetent men. When increasing taxation begins to arouse resistance, loans are launched under false pretences and often with the assistance of falsified accounts. In all the chief towns municipal debts have risen to colossal dimensions and increased with portentous rapidity.” (Hyslop, _Democracy_, pp. 14, 15.) This from another writer: “No candid man can wonder at it. It is the plain, inevitable consequence of the application of the method of extreme democracy to municipal government. The elections are by manhood suffrage. Only a small proportion of the electors have any appreciable interest in moderate taxation and economical administration, and a proportion of votes, which is usually quite sufficient to hold the balance of power, is in the hands of recent and most ignorant immigrants. Is it possible to conceive of conditions more fitted to subserve the purposes of cunning and dishonest men, whose object is personal gain, whose method is the organization of the vicious and ignorant elements of the community into combinations that can turn elections, levy taxes, and appoint administrators? The rings are so skillfully constructed that they can nearly always exclude from office a citizen who is known to be hostile; though a ‘good, easy man, who will not fight, and will make a reputable figurehead, may be an excellent investment.’ Sometimes, no doubt, the bosses quarrel among themselves, and the cause of honest government may gain something by the dispute. But in general, as long as government is not absolutely intolerable, the more industrious and respectable classes keep aloof from the nauseous atmosphere of municipal politics, and decline the long, difficult, doubtful task of entering into conflict with the dominant rings.” * * * * *