Peculiarities of American Municipal Government

IN trying to deduce from American examples some idea of the probable influence of modern democracy on city government, we have to bear in mind that the municipal history of America differs greatly from that of Europe. In Europe, as a general rule, municipalities either existed before the state or grew up in spite of the state ; that is, they were fresh attempts to keep alive the sparks of civilization in the Middle Ages, before anything worthy of the name of a state had been organized, or else they sprang into being as a refuge from or a protest against state despotism. In either case they always had a life of their own, and often a very vigorous and active life. No European city can be said to have owed its growth to the care or authority of the central power. Both kings and nobles looked on cities with suspicion and jealousy ; charters were granted, in the main, with reluctance, and often had to be maintained or extorted by force of arms. These classes recognized liberties or franchises which already existed, rather than granted new privileges or powers. Municipal life was either an inheritance from the Roman Empire, or an attempt at social reorganization in a period of general anarchy.

American cities, on the contrary, are without exception the creations of a state ; they have grown up either under state supervision or through state instigation ; that is, they owe their origin and constitution to the government. Their charters have usually been devised or influenced by people who did not expect to live in the cities, and who had no personal knowledge of their special needs. In other words, an American municipal charter has been rather the embodiment of an a priori view of the kind of thing a city ought to be, than a legal recognition of preëxisting wants and customs. The complete predominance of the state has been a leading idea in the construction of all American charters. No legislature has been willing to encourage the growth of an independent municipal life. No charter has been looked on as a finality or as organic law. In fact, the modification or alteration of charters has been a favorite occupation of all legislatures, stimulated by the rapid growth of the cities and by the absence of all historical experience of municipal life.

The idea most prominent in American municipal history is that cities are simply places in which population is more than usually concentrated. Down to the outbreak of the war this view worked fairly well in most cases. The cities were small, their wants were few, and the inhabitants had little or no thought of any organization differing much from ordinary town government. Gas, water, police, and street-cleaning had not become distinct municipal needs. Pigs were loose in the streets of New York until 1830, and Boston had no mayor until 1822. Generally, too, the government was administered by local notables. Immigration had not begun to make itself seriously felt until 1846, and down to 1830, at least, it was held an honor to be a New York alderman. For the work of governing cities or making charters for them, the average country legislator was considered abundantly competent. It presented none of what we now call " problems.” The result was that new or altered charters were very frequent. The treatment of the city as a separate entity, with wants and wishes of its own and entitled to a voice in the management of its own affairs, was something unknown or unfamiliar. In 1857. when, under the influence of the rising tide of immigration, the affairs of New York as a municipality seemed to become unmanageable, the only remedy thought of was the appointment of state commissioners to take into their own hands portions of the city business, such as the police, the construction of a park, and so on.

The crisis in the affairs of the city of New York which is known as the Tweed period was simply the complete breakdown of this old plan of managing the affairs of the city through the legislature. Tweed could hardly have succeeded in his schemes if he had not had the state legislature at his back, and had not been able to procure such changes in the charter as were necessary for his purpose. He pushed his régime to its legitimate consequences. In fact, his career is entitled to the credit of having first made city government a question, or “ problem,” of American politics. I doubt much whether, previous to his day, any American had considered it as being, or likely to become, a special difficulty of universal suffrage. But his successful rise and troublesome career now presented to the public, in a new and startling light, the impossibility of governing cities effectively by treating them as merely pieces of thickly peopled territory. Ever since his time the municipal problem has been before men’s minds as something to be dealt with somehow ; but for a long time no one knew exactly how to deal with it.

There was an American way, already well known, of meeting other difficulties of government, but the American way of governing large cities under a pure democracy no one seemed to have considered. The American way of curing all evils had hitherto been simply to turn out the party in power, and try the other. It had always been assumed that the party in power would dread overthrow sufficiently to make it “ behave well; ” or, if it did not, that its overthrow would act as a warning which would prevent its successor’s repeating its errors. This system had always been applied successfully to federal and state affairs; why should it not be applied to city affairs ? Accordingly it was so applied to city affairs, without a thought of any other system, down to 1870. But in 1870 it began to dawn on people that party government of great cities would hardly do any longer. City government, it was seen, is in some sense a business enterprise, and must be carried out either by the kind of men one would make directors of a bank or trustees of an estate, or else by highly trained officials; it is like the conduct of an army or a ship.

The first of these methods is not sure to be open any longer in America. One can hardly say that the respect for notables no longer exists in American cities, but it does not exist as a political force or expedient. The habit of considering conspicuous inhabitants as entitled to leading municipal places must be regarded as lost. In a large city conspicuousness is rare, and widespread knowledge of a man’s character or fitness for any particular office is difficult. Moreover, among the class which has already made proof of ability in other callings, readiness to undertake onerous public duties is not often to be met with. Consequently, with few exceptions, the government of successful modern cities has to be entrusted to trained experts, and to get trained experts salaries must be large and tenure permanent. A competent professional man cannot, as a rule, be induced to accept a poorly paid place for a short term. Almost as soon as public attention began to be turned to the subject, the practice of seeking these experts through party organizations was recognized as the chief difficulty of the municipal problem in America. In the first place, the most important offices in cities are elective, and the idea that any elective office could be divorced from party, or could be made non-partisan, was wholly unfamiliar to the American mind. Ever since the Union was established, men had always filled offices, if they could, with persons who agreed with them, and with whom they were in the habit of acting in federal affairs. From the earliest times the Republicans had doubted the fitness of the Federalists, the Whigs that of the Democrats, for any public trust. This feeling, too, had been intensified by the habit, initiated by Jackson, of treating these trusts as rewards for special exertions in the party service. Not only, therefore, in each man’s eyes, were members of the opposite party unfit for office, but the offices seemed to belong of right to the members of his own party.

That city offices could be an exception to this rule was an idea which, when first produced twenty-five years ago, was deemed ridiculous, and is even yet not thoroughly established among the mass of the voters. The belief that offices were spoils or perquisites was, unfortunately, most dominant during the years of great immigration which preceded and immediately followed the war, and became imbedded in the minds of the newcomers as peculiarly “ American.” With this came, not unnaturally, the notion that no one would serve faithfully, in any official place, the party to which he did not belong. Full party responsibility, it was said, required that every place under the government, down to the lowest clerkship, should be filled by members of the party in power. In no place did this notion find readier acceptance than in cities, because the offices in them were so numerous, and the elections so frequent, and the salaries, as compared with those of the country, so high. The possession of the city government, too, meant the possibility of granting a large number of illicit favors. For the laborer, there was sure employment and easy work in the various public departments ; for the public-house keeper, there was protection against the execution of the liquor laws by the police ; for the criminal classes, there was slack prosecution by the district attorney, or easy “jury fixing” by the commissioner of jurors ; for the contractor, there were profitable jobs and much indulgence for imperfect execution ; for the police, there were easy discipline and impunity for corrupt abuses of power. In fact, the cities furnished a perfect field for the practice of the spoils system, and the growth in them of rings and organizations like Tammany was the natural and inevitable consequence. No such organization could be created for charitable purposes, or for the mere diffusion of religious or political opinions. It was made possible in New York by the number of places and benefits at its disposal. The effect on the imagination of the newly arrived emigrant, whether Irish or German, was very great. It shut out from his view both city and state as objects of his allegiance, and made recognition by the “ leader ” of the district in which he lived the first object of his ambition in his new country.

What is true of New York is true, mutatis mutandis, of all the other large cities, — Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis. They all have an organization resembling Tammany, created and maintained by the same means; and at the head of the organization there is a man, ignorant perhaps of all other things, but gifted with unusual capacity for controlling the poor and dependent, who has come since Tweed’s day to be known as a “boss.” Indeed, it may be laid down as a political axiom that it requires considerable education and strong traditions, for any large body which proposes to exert power of any kind towards a definite end, to remain without a leader possessing and exercising a good deal of arbitrary discretion. He arises naturally as a condition of success, and if he has favors to bestow he arises all the more rapidly. The boss is, in short, the inevitable product of the spoils system. He must have sensible advantages to give away in order to retain his power, and he is necessary for their effective distribution. There has to be some one to say decisively who is to have this or that office or prize, who deserves it, and whose services cannot be had without it. There could hardly be a better proof and illustration of this than the way in which the boss system has spread all over the country. In all cities and in many States every political organization now has a similar officer at its head. It remained for some time after Tweed’s day the reproach of the Democrats that they submitted to an arbitrary ruler of this kind, but the Republicans are nearly everywhere imitating them. There are but few States, and there is no large city, in which the offices or nominations for office are not parceled out by one man acting in the name of an “ organization.” Tweed’s control of the city and legislature was not more complete than is Platt’s in New York or Quay’s in Pennsylvania. The system is evidently one which saves trouble, and promotes efficiency in securing the blind obedience of large masses of men. Its end is bad, but that it attains this end there can be no doubt.

It can be easily seen, if all this be true, that no American city has ever been administered with reference to its own interests. In not one, until our own time, has there been even a pretense of non-partisanship; that is, the filling of the offices solely with a view to efficiency in the discharge of their duties. As a rule, they have been filled with a view to the promotion of opinions on some federal question, such as the tariff, or as a reward for services rendered at federal elections. The state of things thus produced in American cities closely resembles the state of things produced in the Middle Ages by religious intolerance, when the main concern of governments was not so much to promote the material interests of their subjects as to maintain right opinions with regard to the future life. The filling of a city office by a man simply because he holds certain views regarding the tariff, or the currency, or the banks, is very like appointing him to an office of state because he is a good Catholic or can conscientiously sign the Thirty-Nine Articles; that is to say, his fitness for his real duties is not a consideration of importance in filling the place. No private business could be carried on in this way, and it is doubtful whether any attempt to carry it on so was ever made. But the temptation to resort to it under party government and universal suffrage is strong, for the reasons which I have tried to set forth in treating of the nominating system. The task of inducing large bodies of men to vote in a particular way is such that it is hardly wonderful that party managers should use every means within their reach for its performance.

One of the effects of the system, and possibly the worst and most difficult to deal with, is the veiling of the city from the popular eye, as the main object of allegiance and attention, by what is called “ the organization,” namely, the club or society, presided over by the boss, which manages party affairs. The tendency among men who take a strong interest in politics to look upon the organization as their real master, to boast of their devotion to it as a political virtue, to call themselves “ organization men,” and to consider the interests of the organization as paramount to those of the city at large is an interesting development of party government. All political parties originate in a belief that a certain idea can be best spread, or a certain policy best promoted, by the formation of an organization for the purpose. The other belief, that one’s own party is fittest for power, and deserves support even when it makes mistakes, easily follows. This is very nearly the condition of the public mind about federal parties. A large number of votes are cast at every federal election merely to show confidence in the party, rather than approval of its position with regard to any specific question. There is a still further stage in the growth of party spirit, in which the voter supports his party, right or wrong, no matter how much he may condemn its policy or its acts, on the ground that it is made up of better material than the other party, and that the latter, if in power, would be more dangerous. The Republican party, in particular, commands a great deal of support, especially from the professional and educated classes throughout the country, on these grounds. They vote for it as the least wrong or least likely to be mischievous, even if they feel unable to vote for it as wise or pure.

But in the cities still another advance has been made, and the parties have really been separated from politics altogether, and treated, without disguise, as competitors for the disposal of a certain number of offices and the handling of a certain amount of money. The boss on either side rarely pretends to have any definite opinions on any federal question, or to concern himself about them. He proclaims openly that his side has the best title to the offices, and the reason he gives for this is, generally, that the other side has made what he considers mistakes. He hardly ever pleads merits of his own. In fact, few or none of the bosses have ever been writers or speakers, or have ever been called on to discuss public questions or have opinions about them. The principal ones, Tweed, Kelly, Croker, Platt, and Quay, have been either silent or illiterate men, famed for their reticence, and have plumed themselves on their ability to do things without talk. In New York, they have succeeded in diffusing among the masses, to a certain extent, the idea that a statesman should not talk, but simply “ fix things,” and vote the right way ; that is, they have divorced discussion from politics. One of the boss’s amusements, when he is disposed to be humorous, is doing something or saying something to show how little influence voters and writers have on affairs. In the late senatorial canvass in New York, a number of letters commending one of the candidates, who happened to be the Republican boss, were published, most of them from young men, and it was interesting to see how many commended silence as one of the best attributes of a Senator.

Consequently, nearly all discussions of city affairs are discussions about places. What place a particular man will get, what place he is trying to get, and by what disappointment about places he is chagrined, or " disgruntled,” as the term is, form the staple topics of municipal debates. The rising against Tammany in 1894, which resulted in the election of Mayor Strong, to some extent failed to produce its due effect, owing to his refusal to distribute places so as to satisfy Mr. Platt, the Republican leader ; or, in other words, to give Mr. Platt the influence in distributing the patronage to which he held that he was entitled. This led to the frustration, or long delay, of the legislation which was necessary to make the overthrow of Tammany of much effect. Some of the necessary bills the legislature, which was controlled by Platt, refused to pass, and others it was induced to pass only by great effort and after long postponement. No reason was ever assigned for this hostility to Strong’s proposals, except failure in the proper distribution of offices. No doubt a certain amount of discussion of plans for city improvement has gone on, but it has gone on among a class which has no connection with politics and possesses little political influence. The class of politicians, properly so called, commonly refuses to interest itself in any such discussions, unless it can be assured beforehand that the proposed improvements will be carried out by certain persons of their own selection, who are seldom fit for the work.

In addition to reliance on change of parties for the improvement of city government, much dependence has been placed on the old American theory that when things get very bad, sufficient popular indignation will be roused to put an end to them ; that the evil will be eradicated by something in the nature of a revolution, as in the case of Tweed and of the Tammany abuses in 1894. But this theory, as regards cities, has to be received with much modification. Popular indignation is excited by violent departures from popular standards ; the popular conscience has to be shocked by striking disregard of the tests established by popular usage; in order that this may happen, the popular conscience has to be kept, if I may use the expression, in a state of training. Now, for the mass of such voters as congregate in great cities, training for the public conscience consists largely in the spectacle of good government. Their standards depend largely on what they see. Nothing, for instance, in fifty years has done as much for street-cleaning in New York as the sight of clean streets presented by Colonel Waring. People must have a certain familiarity with something better, — that is, must either remember or see it, — in order to be really discontented with their present lot. The higher we go in the social scale, the easier it is to excite this discontent, because education and reading raise political as well as other standards. But when once the mass of men have obtained liberty and security, it becomes increasingly difficult to rouse them into activity about matters of apparently less consequence. In other words, incompetence or corruption in the work of administration being rarely visible to the public eye, the masses are not as easily roused by it as they are by bad legislation, or by such interferences with personal liberty as liquor or other sumptuary laws. Their notion of what ought to be is largely shaped by what is. The political education of the people in a democracy, especially in large cities, is to a considerable degree the work of the government. The way in which they see things done becomes in their eyes the way in which they ought to be done ; the kind of men they see in public office becomes the kind of men they think fit for public office ; and the work of rousing them into demanding something better is one of the great difficulties of the democratic régime. The part the actual government plays in forming the political ideals of the young is one of the neglected, but most important topics of political discussion. Our youth learn far more of the real working of our institutions by observation of the men elected or appointed to office, particularly to the judicial and legislative offices, than from school-books or newspapers. The election of a notoriously worthless or corrupt man as a judge or member of the legislature makes more impression on a young mind than any chapter in a governmental manual or any college lecture.

For this reason, the application of the civil service rules to subordinate city offices, which has now been in existence in New York and Boston for many years, is an extremely important contribution to the work of reform, however slow its operation may be. To make known to the public that to get city places a man must come up to the standard of fitness ascertained by competitive examination is not simply a means of improving the municipal service, but an educative process of a high order. The same thing may be said of such matters as the expulsion from office of the Tammany police justices by the general removal act, passed when Mr. Strong came into office in 1895, in spite of all the blemishes in its execution. It made clear to the popular mind, as nothing else could, that a certain degree of character and education was necessary to the discharge of even minor judicial functions, and that the Tammany standard of " common sense ” and familiar acquaintance with the criminal classes was not sufficient. The covert or open opposition to what is called civil service reform, on the part of nearly the whole political class in cities, goes to confirm this view. There could be no greater blow to the existing system of political management than the withdrawal of the offices from arbitrary disposal by the bosses. The offices have been for half a century the chief or only means of rewarding subordinate agents for political work and activity.

One effect, and a marked one, of this withdrawal has been the introduction of the practice of levying blackmail on corporations, nominally for political purposes. Nothing is known certainly about the amounts levied in this way, but there are two thousand corporations in New York exposed to legislative attack, and in the aggregate their contributions must reach a very large sum. Since the boss has obtained command of the legislature as well as of the city,—that is, since Tweed’s time, —they are literally at the mercy of the legislature, or, in other words, at his mercy. Their taxes may be raised, or, in the case of gas companies or railroad companies, their charges lowered. The favorite mode of bringing insurance companies to terms is ordering an examination of their assets, which may be done through the superintendent of insurance, who is an appointee of the governor and Senate, or, virtually, of the boss. This examination has to be paid for by the company, and, I am told, may be made to cost $200,000 ; it is usually conducted by politicians out of a job, of a very inferior class. To protect themselves from annoyances of this sort, the corporations, which it must be remembered are creations of the law, and increase in number every year, are only too glad to meet the demands of the boss. Any “ campaign ” contribution, no matter how large, and it is sometimes as high as $50,000 or even $100,000, is small compared to the expense which he can finflict on them by his mere fiat. Of course this is corruption, and the corporations know it. The officers, however high they may stand in point of business character, submit to it, or connive at it. In many cases, if not in most, they even confess it. They defend their compliance, too, on grounds which carry one back a long way in the history of settled government. That is, they say that their first duty is to protect the enormous amount of property committed to their charge, a large portion of which belongs to widows and orphans; that if they have any duty at all in the matter of reforming municipal and state administration, it is a secondary and subordinate one, which should not be performed at the cost of any damage to these wards ; that, therefore, the sum they pay to the boss may be properly considered as given to avert injury against which the law affords no protection. They maintain that in all this matter they are victims, not offenders, and that the real culprit is the government of the State, which fails to afford security to property in the hands of a certain class of owners.

I will not attempt to discuss here the soundness of this view in point of morality. It is to be said, in extenuation at least, that the practices of which the corporations are accused prevail all over the Union, in city and in country, East and West. I have had more than one admission made to me by officers of companies that they kept an agent at the state capital during sessions of the legislature for the express purpose of shielding them, by means of money, against legislative attacks, and that without this they could not carry on business. It has been the custom, I am afraid, to a greater or less extent, for corporations to keep such agents at the state capitals ever since corporations became at all numerous and rich, — for fully fifty years. What is peculiar and novel about the present situation is that the boss has become a general agent for all the companies, and saves them the trouble of keeping one at their own cost, in Albany or Harrisburg, or in any other state capital. He receives what they wish or are expected to pay, and in return he guarantees them the necessary protection. He is thus the channel through which pass all payments made by any one for “campaign " purposes. If his party is not in office he receives very little, barely enough to assure him of good will. When his party is in power, as the power is his, there need be practically no limit to his demands.

If it be asked why the corporations do not themselves revolt against this system and stop it by exposure, the answer is simple enough. In the first place, most of the corporations have rivals, and dread being placed at a disadvantage by some sort of persecution from which competitors may have bought exemption. The thing which they dread most is business failure or defeat. For this they are sure to be held accountable by stockholders or by the public ; for submitting to extortion, they may not be held accountable by anybody. In the next place, the supervision exercised by the state officers being lax or corrupt, the corporations are likely to be lawbreakers in some of their practices, and to dread exposure or inquiry. In many cases, therefore, they are doubtless only too glad to buy peace or impunity, and this their oppressors probably know very well. Last of all, and perhaps the most powerful among the motives for submission, is the fear of vengeance in case they should not succeed. A corporation which undertook to set the boss at defiance would enter on a most serious contest, with little chance of success. All the influences at his command, political and judicial, would be brought into play for its defeat. Witnesses would disappear, or refuse to answer. Juries would be “ fixed ; ” judges would be technical and timid ; the press would be bought up by money or advertising, or by political influence ; other motives than mere resistance to oppression would be invented and imputed ; the private character of the officers would be assailed. In short, the corporation would probably fail, or appear to fail, in proving its case, and would find itself substantially foiled in its undertaking, after having expended a great deal of money, and having excited the bitter enmity of the boss and of all the active politicians among his followers. It can hardly be expected that a company would make such an attempt without far stronger support than it would receive from the public, owing to the general belief that no corporation would come into court with clean hands. How little effect public support would give in such a contest, as long as the power of the boss over the legislators and state officials continues, through the present system of nomination, may be inferred from what has happened in the case of the enlargement of the city of New York, known as the Greater New York Bill.¹

The subjection of the city to the person who controls the legislature is secured in part by the use of federal and possibly city offices, and in part by the extortion of money from property-holders, for purposes of corruption ; and all remedy for this is impeded or wholly hindered by the interest of city voters in matters other than municipal.

The earliest remedy, — the substitution of one party in the city government for another, — which has been employed steadily by each party for the last half century with singular acquiescence on the part of the public, has been to some degree supplanted, since the war, by another, namely, the modification of the charter, so as to secure greater concentration of power in few hands. More and more authority has been withdrawn from the bodies elected for purposes of legislation, and has been transferred to the bodies elected for purposes of administration. Before the late change in the city charter, the New York board of aldermen, by a process of deprivation pursued through long years, was bereft of all but the most insignificant powers. The preparation of the city estimates and the imposition of the city taxes, two peculiarly legislative duties, were transferred bodily to a small board composed of the mayor and heads of departments. Nearly every change in charters has armed the mayor with more jurisdiction. This movement has run on lines visible in almost all democratic communities. The rise of the boss is distinctly one of its results. There is everywhere a tendency to remit to a single person the supreme direction of large bodies of men animated with a common purpose or bound together by common ideas. One sees in this person dim outlines of the democratic Cæsar of the Napoleonic era, but he differs in that he has to do his work under the full glare of publicity, has to be able to endure “ exposure ” and denunciation by a thousand newspapers and to bear overthrow by combinations among his own followers with equanimity, and has to rely implicitly on “ management ” rather than on force.

The difficulty of extracting from a large democracy an expression of its real will is, in fact, slowly becoming manifest. It is due partly to the size of the body, and partly to the large number of voters it must necessarily contain who find it troublesome to make up their minds, or who fail to grasp current questions, or who love and seek guidance in important transactions. On most of the great national questions of our day, except in exciting times, a large proportion of the voters do not hold their opinions with much firmness or tenacity or with much distinctness. On one point in particular, which has great importance in all modern democracies, — the effect of any specific measure on the party prospects, — the number of men who have clear ideas is very small. The mass to be influenced is so large, and the susceptibilities of different localities differ so widely, that fewer and fewer persons, except those who “have their hand on the machine,” venture on a confident prediction as to the result of an election. The consequence is that those who do hold cleancut opinions, and pronounce them with courage, speedily acquire influence and authority, almost in spite of themselves. Indeed, almost every influence now in operation, both in politics and in business, tends to the concentration of power. The disposition to combine several small concerns into one large one, to consolidate corporations, and to convert private partnerships into companies is but an expression of the general desire to remit the work of management or administration to one man or to a very few men. In all considerable bodies of men who wish to act together for common objects, the many are anxious to escape the responsibility of direction, and, naturally enough, this has shown itself in city government as well as in party government.

The result is that there are, in nearly every large city and in nearly every new charter, signs of a desire for strong centralized management. This tendency has been temporarily obscured in New York by the consolidation of the suburbs into what is called the Greater New York. In order to secure this, that is, to obtain the consent of “the politicians,” it has been found necessary to revive the old, long-tried, and much-condemned plan of a city legislature with two branches, a number of boards, and a wide diffusion of responsibility. There is about this new machinery an appearance of local representative self-government, but it is only an appearance. The real power of interference, change, or modification still resides in the legislature at Albany, and the habit of interference is already formed and active. Moreover, the legislature at Albany is still dominated by the boss, and his rule over the city has been rendered more remote by the new charter, not destroyed or restricted. No alteration in the city government can be made without his consent, and any alteration which he insists on must be made. So that the one-man power in the administration of city affairs is still preserved. It is simply taken from the mayor; the change is merely one of person or officer. It can hardly be expected that as long as the boss controls the state legislature he should not also control all inferior legislatures created by it. If he did not do so, he would deprive himself of a considerable portion of his power of reward and punishment. The complications of the new charter, too, are so great that it is not likely that persons interested in pushing schemes through the city government will take the trouble to put all the new machinery in motion.

In all political arrangements, it is impossible to prevent persons who wish to secure a benefit or favor from a government from acting along the line of least resistance; that is, from attaining their object with the least possible expenditure of time and money. It will always be possible and it will always be easy to carry a measure of any kind, approved by the boss, through the legislature at Albany without debate and by three hasty readings. Under these circumstances, to expose it to the risk of the charter machinery would be a departure from what is now established usage.

The municipal history of New York, in short, and, mutatis mutandis, of all the American cities in which there has been any whispering of municipal reform, seems to indicate that the most carefully formed opinion on the subject of American municipal government runs parallel with the popular sentiment, or popular weakness, which has called the boss into existence. In both cases, the conclusion is inevitable that the large masses of men who exercise the suffrage, both in city and in country, cannot be influenced and managed and brought to the polling-place for intelligent and effective action without great concentration of authority and responsibility. The popular will, it is becoming increasingly plain, cannot be really expressed without so diminishing the number of persons who are to be its organs that the ignorant men and the busy men, who form the bulk of every community, can learn at a glance the cause of every failure and shortcoming.

Nothing is clearer in the modern world than that the more complicated governmental administration becomes, the less time has the community at large to attend to it. The old days of dull agricultural leisure, which the mass of every nation enjoyed till the beginning of this century, have passed away. The desire to “ rise in the world,” — that is, to get hold of more of the good things of civilization,— which now prevails in every country, tends more and more to make administration a specialty, because of the pressure of what are called “ private affairs.” At the same time, the desire of the masses to exercise some sort of control over it, or supervision of it, seems also to grow in force every day. The only way in which this desire can make itself felt is by throwing the work of transacting public affairs into fewer hands. This is what the rise of the boss means, and what the increasing formation of “ trusts ” and corporations means. It is, too, what the tendency in cities to give more power to the mayor and to restrict the number of his councilors means. This tendency is so strong, and one so stimulated by all the facts of modern life, that the attempt made in the late New York charter to run counter to it throws doubt on either the honesty or the intelligence of the persons engaged in it. The creation of a vast complicated municipal system at the moment when there is such a widespread cry for simplicity, and of an unwieldy new legislature just as all legislatures are falling into disrepute and surrendering their power, shows an indifference to the signs of the times which can hardly be ascribed altogether to thoughtlessness. What modern municipalities need, especially in America, is a régime in which, without hesitation, without study, without lawyers’ or experts’ opinions, the humblest laborer can tell who is responsible for any defect he may discover in the police of the streets, in the education of his children, or in the use and mode of his taxation.

To secure such a régime, however, the control of state legislatures in America over cities must be either reduced or destroyed, and this seems the task which, above all, has first to he accomplished by municipal reforms ; it is really the one in which they are now engaged, though, apparently, sometimes unconsciously. The “hearings” of leading citizens by legislative committees, which almost invariably accompany the passage by state legislatures of measures affecting municipal government, are in the nature of protests against legislative action, or assertions of the incompetency of the legislature to deal with the matter in hand. The contemptuous indifference with which they are generally treated is simply an assertion that, under no circumstances, will the legislature surrender its power. This has been curiously illustrated by the recent complete refusal of the New York legislature to pay any attention to the power of veto given to the mayors of New York cities by the late constitutional convention. This provision has had so little effect that a mayor’s objections to any particular piece of legislation are not even discussed, much less answered. It has seemed as if the legislature were unwilling to allow it to be supposed that it could ever be in any way influenced by the criticism or suggestion of local notables. All American legislatures have long shown unwillingness to adopt suggestions or submit to interference from the outside. Few, if any, of the numerous reports of commissions on taxation or municipal government or other subjects made during the last thirty years have received any attention ; the same thing is true of the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, though all these documents contain a vast amount of valuable matter. It is not likely that remonstrances or criticism emanating from municipal bodies hereafter will meet with any better fate unless they have powerful popular support. To create this support is the first business which municipal reformers have before them.

There is another reason why state legislatures are unwilling to relinquish their control of cities, and it is nearly as potent as any ; that is, the accumulation of wealth in the cities as compared to the country. One of the peculiarities of an agricultural population is the small amount of cash it handles. Farmers, as a general rule, live to some extent on their own produce, wear old clothes, as people are apt to do in the country, pay no house-rent, very rarely divert themselves by “ shopping,” and seldom see any large sum of money except at their annual sales after harvest. In short, as compared with an urban population, they live with what seems great economy. The temptations to small expenses which so constantly beset a city man seldom come in their way. Their standard of living in dress, food, clothing, and furniture is much lower than that of a city population of a corresponding class. The result is that money has a much greater value in their eyes than in those of the commercial class. They part with a dollar more reluctantly; they think it ought to go farther. They look on a city man’s notion of salaries as utterly extravagant or unreasonable, and to receive such salaries seems to them almost immoral. City life they consider marked throughout by gross extravagance.

Moreover, the farmer finds it very difficult to place a high value on labor which is not done with the hands and does not involve exposure to weather. Difference of degree in value of such labor it is hard, if not impossible, to estimate. The expense of training for an intellectual occupation, such as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s, he is not willing to take into account. One consequence of this has been that, though almost all servants of the government — judges, secretaries, collectors — live in cities or by city standards, their salaries are fixed not so much by the market value of their services as by the farmer’s notion of what is reasonable ; for the farmer is as yet the ruling power in America. The salaries of the federal judges, for instance, were fixed at the establishment of the government by the largest annual earnings of a lawyer of the highest standing of that day ; they are now about one fourth of what such a lawyer earns, and it would be difficult or impossible to increase them. The farmer’s inability, too, to estimate degrees in the value of such services leads him to suppose that what they are worth is the sum for which anybody will undertake to render them, and that if any member of the bar offered to discharge the duties of a judge of the Supreme Court for one thousand dollars a year, it would be proper enough to accept his services at that rate. This great difference has some important political consequences also. It leads to agricultural distrust of urban views on finance, and produces in country districts a deep impression of city recklessness and greed. City exchanges, whether stock or produce, are supposed by the farmer to be the resorts of gamblers rather than instruments of legitimate business.

In truth, the difference in needs and interests and points of view between the city and the country arises almost as soon as anything which can be called a city comes into existence. Close contact with many other men, constant daily intercourse with one’s fellows, familiarity with the business of exchanging commodities, the necessity for frequent coöperation, all help to convert the inhabitant of cities into a new type of man. The city man has always been a polished or “ urbane ” man. The distinction between him and the “ rustic,” in mind and manners, has in all ages been among the commonplaces of literature. One material effect of this difference is that the urban man has been an object of slight dislike or jealousy to the countryman. His greater alertness of mind, which comes from much social intercourse, and familiarity with trade and commerce, makes him in some degree an object of suspicion to the latter, who constantly dreads being outwitted by him. Cities, too, have always been to the countryman resorts of vice of one sort or another, and all that he hears of the temptations of city life fills him with a sense of his own moral superiority. To the poet and to the farmer the country has been the seat of virtue, simplicity, and purity ; the one moralist who practiced his own precepts was the rustic moralist. It has been very natural, therefore, that in America, in which the country has had the power before the city, and not, as in Europe, the city before the country, the country should have tried with peculiar care to retain its free domination over the city.

This process has been made easy not only by the fact that the city was generally created by the State, but by our practice of selecting our state capitals, not for judicial, or commercial, or historical, but for topographical considerations. No other people has been in the habit, or has had the opportunity, of choosing places for its political capitals at all. In all other countries, if I am not mistaken, the capitals were made by trade, or commerce, or manufactures, or some ancient drift of population. But in many of our States the political capital is not the chief city in wealth or population ; it owes its political preëminence to the fact that it was within easy reach from all parts of the State, in the days when travel was slow and difficult, —a circumstance now of no importance whatever. The site of the capital of the Union was chosen for similar reasons. It was placed in a swamp, chiefly because the position was central, and it had to be created from the beginning. Were capitals selected with us by the agencies to which they owe their existence in the Old World, New York would be the capital of the State of New York, Philadelphia of Pennsylvania, Cincinnati of Ohio, Chicago of Illinois, and Detroit of Michigan.

The present arrangement has proved unfortunate in two ways: it has helped to confirm the rural mind in a belief in the inferiority and insignificance of cities as compared to the country ; and it has kept legislators, when in session, secluded from the observation of the most active - minded portion of the population and from intercourse with them, and has deprived them of the information and the new ideas which such intercourse brings with it. Members of Congress and of the state legislatures suffer seriously in mind and character from our practice of cutting them off, during their official lives, from communion with the portion of the population most immersed in affairs, and of keeping them out of sight of those who are most competent to understand their action and to criticise it. No one who has paid much attention to our political life can have helped observing the injurious effect on the legislative mind of massing legislators together in remote towns, in which they exchange ideas only with one another, and get no inkling of the real drift of public opinion about a particular measure until it has been irrevocably acted upon. There is no question that this has been in all parts of the country a powerful aid to the boss in preserving his domination. Nothing can suit his purpose better than to get his nominees together in some remote corner of the State, in which he can instruct them in their duties and watch their action without disturbance from outside currents of criticism or suggestion. Every legislature is the better, and its tone is the healthier, for being kept in close contact with the leading centres of business in the community and hearing daily or hourly from its men of affairs. Much of the ignorance about exchange, credit, and currency, and of the suspicion of bankers and men of business, which has shown itself in our legislative capitals in late years, has been due to the isolation of the rural legislator from social intercourse with men engaged in other pursuits than his own.

But the most serious drawback in the practice of making political capitals to order is undoubtedly its tendency to lessen the rural legislator’s sense of the importance of cities, and to increase his readiness to interfere in their government without any real knowledge of their needs. This readiness is one of the greatest difficulties of American municipal government. It arises, as I have said, partly from the historical antecedents of our cities ; partly from the countryman’s sense of moral superiority, in which the clergy and the poets try to confirm him ; and partly from the fear inspired by the rapid growth of the cities in population, and the belief that their interests are in some manner different from those of the country. This belief found expression in the provision of the New York Constitution that the city or county of New York should never be represented by more than half the state Senate. There is a vague fear diffused through the rural districts that if the cities should get the upper hand in the state government, or should succeed in achieving even a quasi-independence, some serious consequence to the whole community would follow. But to have any fear on the subject is to question the whole democratic theory. The system of political division into states and districts and counties, with separate representation, is an admission that different localities have different interests, of which other localities are not competent to take charge. It is on this idea that local self-government is based. It is the principal reason why New York does not govern Massachusetts, or Buffalo govern New York.

In the case of cities this difference is simply magnified, and the incompetency of other districts or counties for the work of their management is made more than usually plain. To suppose that a city is less fit to govern itself than are more thinly peopled districts, or that its political ascendency would contain danger to the State, is to abandon the democratic theory. In a democratic community there is really no conflict of interests between city and country ; the prosperity of one makes the prosperity of the other. Neither can grow rich by the impoverishment of the other. From the democratic point of view, a city is merely a very large collection of people in one spot, with many wants peculiar to such large collections. To deny its fitness to govern itself is to deny the majority principle with strong emphasis. Nevertheless, the attempts hitherto made in America to secure reform in the administration of cities have been almost exclusively efforts to wrest greater powers of local administration from the state legislatures, which consist in the main of farmers, who have no special interest in cities whatever, but who are indomitable champions of local self-government in all other political divisions. In three States only, as yet, Missouri, California, and Washington, have the cities succeeded in securing a constitutional right to approve their own charters before they go into operation, which is the furthest step in advance that has been made. In twenty-three States they are constitutionally secured against having special charters made for them by the legislature, with or without their consent. Whatever sort of organic law is imposed in one city in these States must be imposed in all. But in ten States the cities are still at the mercy of the legislature, which may govern them by special legislation, and make, amend, or annul charters at its discretion, without pity or remorse.

In looking at the history and condition of municipalities in America, one consideration meets us at every stage ; that is, that in no other civilized country is municipal government so completely within the control of public opinion. Everywhere else there are deeply rooted traditions, long-established customs, muchrespected vested rights and cherished prejudices, to be dealt with, before any satisfactory framework of city government can be set up. Here the whole problem is absolutely at the disposal of popular sentiment. Our cities, therefore, might most easily have been the model cities of the modern world. Birmingham and Glasgow and Berlin, in other words, ought to have been in America. It is we who ought to have shown the Old World how to live comfortably in great masses in one place. We have no city walls to pull down, or ghettos to clear out, or guilds to buy up, or privileges to extinguish. We have simply to provide health, comfort, and education, in our own way, according to the latest experience in science, for large bodies of free men in one spot.

This is as much as saying that in talking of the municipal question we describe a state of the popular mind, and not a state of law. Charters are nowhere else in the world an expression of popular thought as much as in America. They are merely what people believe or permit at any given period. Very often they are well adapted to our needs, like the late New York charter, but fail to give satisfaction, because, having provided the charter, we take no pains to secure competent officials. Finding that it does not work well, we seek a remedy by making a change in its provisions rather than in the men who administer it. In this way our municipal woes are perpetuated, and we continue to write and talk of charters as if they were self-acting machines instead of certain ways of doing business. No municipal reform will last long or prove efficient without a strong and healthy public spirit behind it. With this almost any charter would prove efficient.

E. L. Godkin.