By 1815 Tammany Hall obtained control of the State, and in 1816 completely regained that of the city. The Common Council and its dependent offices since 1809 had been more or less under Federalist rule, and from the beginning of the century the city had had a succession of Clintonite office-holders in those posts controlled by the Council of Appointment. At the close of the War of 1812 the population of the city approached 100,000, and there were 13,941 voters in all. The total expenses of the municipality reached a little over a million dollars. The city had but one public school, which was maintained by public subscription. Water was supplied chiefly by the Manhattan Company, by means of bored wooden logs laid underground from the reservoir in Chambers street. No fire department was dreamed of, and every blaze had the city at its mercy. The streets were uncleaned; only two or three thoroughfares were fit for the passage of carriages, though until 1834 the law required the inhabitants to clean the streets in front of their houses. Many of those elaborate departments which we now associate with political control were then either in an embryo state or not thought of. The Aldermen were not overburdened with public anxieties. No salary was attached to the office, yet none the less, it was sought industriously. In early days it was regarded as a post of honor and filled as such, but with the beginning of the century it was made a means of profit. The professional politician of the type of to-day was rare. The Aldermen had business, as a rule, upon which they depended and to which they attended in the day, holding sessions of the board sporadically at night. The only exception to this routine was when the Alderman performed some judicial office. Under the law, as soon as an Alderman entered office he became a judge of some of the most important courts, being obliged to preside with the Mayor at the trial of criminals. This system entailed upon the Aldermen the trial of offenses against laws many of which they themselves made, and it had an increasingly pernicious influence upon politics. Otherwise the sole legal perquisites and compensation of the Aldermen consisted in their power and custom of making appropriations, including those for elaborate public dinners for themselves. It was commonly known that they awarded contracts for city necessaries either to themselves or to their relatives.