ouis." He was the
agent usually sought by franchise-seekers, and he said that had the
Suburban Company dealt with him instead of with the members of the
Assembly, they might have avoided exposure. He was indicted four times
in the upheaval, twice for attempting to bribe the Board of Health
in the garbage deal--he was a stockholder in the company seeking the
contract--and twice for bribery in the lighting contract.

Cincinnati inherited from the Civil War the domestic excitements and
political antagonisms of a border city. Its large German population gave
it a conservative political demeanor, slow to accept changes, loyal
to the Republican party as it was to the Union. This reduced partizan
opposition to a docile minority, willing to dicker for public spoils
with the intrenched majority.

George B. Cox was for thirty years the boss of this city. Events had
prepared the way for him. Following closely upon the war, Tom Campbell,
a crafty criminal lawyer, was the local leader of the Republicans, and
John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, a very rich man, of
the Democrats. These two men were cronies: they bartered the votes
of their followers. For some years crime ran its repulsive course:
brawlers, thieves, cutthroats escaped conviction through the defensive
influence of the lawyer-boss. In 1880, Cox, who had served an
apprenticeship in his brother-in-law's gambling house, was elected
to the city council. Thence he was promoted to the decennial board of
equalization which appraised all real estate every ten years. There
followed a great decrease in the valuation of some of the choicest
holdings in the city. In 1884 there were riots in Cincinnati. After the
acquittal of two brutes who had murdered a man for a trifling sum of
money, exasperated citizens burned the criminal court house. The barter
in justice stopped, but the barter in offices and in votes continued.
The Blaine campaign then in progress was in great danger. Cox, already
a master of the political game, promised the Republican leaders that
if they would give him a campaign fund he would turn in a Republican
majority from Cincinnati. He did; and for many years thereafter the
returns from Hamilton County, in which Cincinnati is situated, brought
cheer to Republican State headquarters on election night.

Cox was an unostentatious, silent man, giving one the impression
of sullenness, and almost entirely lacking in those qualities of
comradeship which on