Burns formed an aggressive team. The Ring proved as vulnerable as
it was rotten. Over three hundred indictments were returned,
involving persons in every walk of life. Ruef was sentenced to
fourteen years in the penitentiary. Schmitz was freed on a
technicality, after being found guilty and sentenced to five
years. Most of the other indictments were not tried, the
prosecutor's attention having been diverted to the trail of the
franchise-seekers, who have thus far eluded conviction.

Minneapolis, a city blending New England traditions with
Scandinavian thrift, illustrates, in its experiences with "Doc"
Ames, the maneuvers of the peripatetic boss. Ames was four times
mayor of the city, but never his own successor. Each succeeding
experience with him grew more lurid of indecency, until his third
term was crystallized in Minneapolis tradition as "the notorious
Ames administration." Domestic scandal made him a social outcast,
political corruption a byword, and Ames disappeared from public
view for ten years.

In 1900 a new primary law provided the opportunity to return him
to power for the fourth time. Ames, who had been a Democrat, now
found it convenient to become a Republican. The new law, like
most of the early primary laws, permitted members of one party to
vote in the primaries of the other party. So Ames's following,
estimated at about fifteen hundred, voted in the Republican
primaries, and he became a regular candidate of that party in a
presidential year, when citizens felt the special urge to vote
for the party.

Ames was the type of boss with whom discipline is secondary to