The headline in the July 22, 1871 edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES screamed "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed." The story running under it was even more shocking. The people who had been hired to build the city's new courthouse -- the "forty thieves," as they came to be called -- were stealing the cities money by the barrelful. At a time when the average workman made a dollar a day, contractors charged the city $400,000 for safes, $175,000 for carpets, and $7,500 for thermometers. Altogether, the courthouse cost over $13 million -- or more than twice what the United State paid for Alaska four years earlier! The leader of the "ring" -- William "Boss" Tweed -- was not so worried about the headlines. It was the cartoons that got to him. Drawn by Thomas Nast (the same cartoonist who first drew Santa Claus the way we picture him) and printed in Harper's magazine, they depicted Tweed as a vulture, and worse. Tweed was right to fear the cartoons. Convicted on 204 criminal counts, he escaped from jail twice. The second time, he got as far as Spain, but was caught when police there recognized his face from Nast's drawing. Tweed died penniless in jail 1878 and the mayor refused to fly the City Hall flag at half-mast in honor of his passing.
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