and burglars,
pickpockets, safe-blowers, and harlots made their way thither. Mr. W.
A. Frisbie, the editor of a leading Minneapolis paper, described the
situation in the following words: "It is no exaggeration to say that in
this period fully 99% of the police department's efficiency was devoted
to the devising and enforcing of blackmail. Ordinary patrolmen on beats
feared to arrest known criminals for fear the prisoners would prove to
be 'protected'....The horde of detective favorites hung lazily about
police headquarters, waiting for some citizen to make complaint of
property stolen, only that they might enforce additional blackmail
against the thief, or possibly secure the booty for themselves. One
detective is now (1903) serving time in the state prison for retaining a
stolen diamond pin."

The mayor thought he had a machine for grinding blackmail from every
criminal operation in his city, but he had only a gang, without
discipline or coordinating power, and weakened by jealousy and
suspicion. The wonder is that it lasted fifteen months. Then came
the "April Grand Jury," under the foremanship of a courageous and
resourceful business man. The regime of criminals crumbled; forty-nine
indictments, involving twelve persons, were returned.

The Grand Jury, however, at first stood alone in its investigations. The
crowd of politicians and vultures were against it, and no appropriations
were granted for getting evidence. So its members paid expenses out of
their own pockets, and its foreman himself interviewed prisoners and
discovered the trail that led to the Ring's undoing. Ames's brother was
convicted on second trial and sentenced to six and a half years in the
penitentiary, while two of his accomplices received shorter terms. Mayor
Ames, under indictment and heavy bonds, fled to Indiana.

The President of the City Council, a business man of education, tact,
and sincerity, became mayor, for an interim of four months; enough time,
as it proved, for him to return the city to its normal political life.

These examples are sufficient to illustrate the organization and working
of the municipal machine. It must not be imagined by the reader that
these cities alone, and a few others made notorious by the magazine
muck-rakers, are the only American cities that have developed
oligarchies. In truth, not a single American city, great or small, has
entirely escaped, for a greater or lesser period, the sway of a coterie
of polit