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School Commissioner in New York City in 1857.

That some year he was elected a member of the newly organized Board of Supervisors, where he remained as member or President until 1870 when a new City Charter-advocated by Tweed-central­ized the power to an even greater degree and led eventually to the exposure and downfall of the Tweed Ring. F The story of Tweed is the story of Tammany for that period and can be told no more graphically, perhaps, than was done by Elmer Davis in the official History of the New York Times, published a few years ago. It is a fascinating, if sordid tale and runs the gamut from threats by Tweed and his associates to put the Times out of business to an offer of $5,000,000 in cash to George Jones, the publisher, if he would suppress the evidence of graft and discontinue his attacks on the ring.

"It is customary," Davis says in the History of the New York Times, "in discussing the Tweed ring, to call attention to the gradual and in the long view, quite considerable improvement in the standard of New York municipal politics. Even in the worst scandals of more recent periods the offenders showed a certain regard for outward order and de­cency. City officials no longer thrust their arms into the city treasury and steal money outright, as Tweed and his associates used to do; modern peculations are

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