The frauds and scandals in city affairs continued and grew from 1854 to 1860; it was impossible to learn from the city’s books how much was being plundered. In three years the taxes nearly doubled. From 1850 to 1860 the expenses of the city government increased from $3,200,000 to $9,758,000. Politics in the old Sixth Ward of New York is briefly sketched by Frank Moss, at one time Police Commissioner, in his interesting work, _The American Metropolis_. No doubt civilization existed in that district from 1845 to 1865, the period referred to by Moss; there were churches and schools, family and business life as elsewhere. It was originally a fairly respectable neighborhood, but thanks to manhood suffrage, the political life of the community was thoroughly savage and its representatives savages, and it and they did much to degrade the whole ward. First we find “that hard-faced, heavy-handed old rapscallion Isaiah Rynders was the controlling spirit. There was nothing that Rynders could not or would not do, and there are many dark stories of his conduct during the draft riots of 1863.” He was the Boss of the district, his assistants were ruffians, his leaders and backers were office-holding politicians with the “Hon.” prefix to their notorious names. He was succeeded by Con Donoho, the head of the street cleaning department, whose gang finally trounced the Rynders gang into submission and who became thereafter “on close terms with the strongest political men of the city.” Moss finds thirty years later a similar alliance between crime and politics in the Eighth Ward of New York, among whose political rulers are, he says “pimps, gamblers, thugs, fighters and dive keepers.” In 1860 the mayor was accused of selling appointments to offices. The Grand Jury in a presentment charged him with robbing the tax payers of $420,000. The _New York Tribune_ in June 1860 publicly charged the municipal authorities with theft of public funds. Other newspaper criticism was silenced by orders for public advertising. The money voted for street cleaning was squandered, and the streets were so filthy that the death rate in 1863 was thirty-three per thousand. In a court proceeding in 1867 it incidentally transpired that $50,000 had been paid the common council for one gas franchise.