for a variety of local needs. Housing of the poor, the ownership and operation of transportation agencies and lighting plants, etc., are within the scope of municipal authority.

But what is the position of municipal corporations in the United States? Not only is their sphere strangely restricted in every direction, but even within the sphere reluctantly recognized they are never safe from annoying interferences of the central legislature, interferences too often prompted by partisan and political considerations. Without reason or rhyme a bill may be introduced in the legislature taking the police department or the health department out of the control of the city government, and a general appeal to the vital principle of "home rule" has but little weight with ordinary politicians. The evils flowing from this condition are grave and far-reaching. It will suffice to quote here the remarkable language used by the Fassett Senate committee of New York in a report on the government of cities submitted a few years ago. A very elaborate review of the facts is summarized thus :—

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"The situation, then, is as follows: That it is frequently impossible for the legislature, the municipal officers, or even the courts, to tell what the laws mean; that it is impossible for any one either in private life or public office to tell what the exact business condition of any city is, and that municipal government is a mystery even to the experienced; that municipal officers can escape responsibility for their acts or failures by securing amendments the law; that municipal officers can escape responsibility to the public on account of the unintelligibility of the laws and the insufficient publicity of the facts relating to municipal governments; that local authorities receive permission to increase municipal debt for the performance of public works which should be paid for out of taxation; that the conflict of authority is sometimes so great as to result in a complete or partial paralysis of the service; that our cities have no real autonomy; that local self-government is a misnomer; and that consequently so little interest is felt in matters of local business that in almost every city in the State it has fallen into the hands of professional politicians."

Now these are conditions which, as

the Fassett committee justly concluded, if applied to the business of any other corporation, would make the maintenance of a continued policy and a successful administration utterly impossible, and produce waste and mismanagement such as is to-day the distinguishing feature of municipal business as compared with that of private corporations.

Here is the testimony of a distinguished practical man, President Seth Low of Columbia University, who as ex-mayor of the (late) municipality of Brooklyn is entitled to speak with authority. In his admirable chapter on American municipal government in Mr. Bryce's work, Mr. Low writes: "The charter of a city, coming as it does from the legislature, is entirely within the control of the legislature. Just as there is no legal bar to prevent the legislature from recalling the charter altogether, so there is no feature of the charter so minute that the legislature may not assume to change it." Mr. Low adds that he found, soon after his installation as mayor, that not the least important of his duties was to protect the city from unwise and adverse legislation on the part of the State.

It is unnecessary to dwell on this point, for every one who has intelligently observed the course of municipal politics must have become impressed, if not oppressed, by the difficulties in the realization of the genuine home rule principle. Many constitutional amendments have been expressly adopted in late years, for the purpose of safe-guarding cities from arbitrary interference on the part of the legislature, but these amendments have, in most cases, failed to produce the intended effects. Who does not know that, for example, constitutional inhibitions of "special legislation" have been almost wholly annulled by judicial construction and evasion? All that is required to insure the approval of a special law by the courts, is to clothe it with a general verbal form. A statute which would be incontinently thrown out as manifestly invalid if its terms made it applicable to one, two, or several cities named, is sustained as perfectly constitutional when the transparent subterfuge is resorted to of applying it to all cities having this or that number of inhabitants. An Illinois law for a police commission for Chicago appointed by the Governor would be unconstitutional,

but a law creating such a commission for every city in Illinois having over 200,000 population is constitutional, though the legislature and the courts know that Illinois has but one city of the alleged class designated, and though no concealment whatever is made of the purpose of imposing a special kind of police government on that city.

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The first essential condition precedent to municipal reform is an approximation to the English and Continental European way of treating cities. The sphere of local self-government must be defined and respected, and cities must have the right and opportunity conferred upon them of working out their own salvation and experimenting at their own risk and The indefiniteness and uncertainty of the status of the American municipality are primarily responsible for the absurdly unscientific methods by which local affairs are administered. To quote Professor Frank J. Goodnow, whose studies of municipal problems, in their legal aspects, are the most searching and exhaustive extant, "little progress in municipal reform can be made until it is known what the sphere of municipal government is, and until an ample degree of local autonomy is secured."

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We have next to ask to what extent, if any, the vices of municipal government are justly ascribable to the adopted form of organization. In other words, the large and far from simple question of structure demands consideration. there any special form of organization from which efficient and economical administration might be expected? there is, does it prevail in our cities? Mr. Bryce comments upon the strange lack of uniformity in the municipal governments of the United States. Not only has each State its own system of laws for the government of cities, but even within a State one generally finds that one large city is differently organized from another, while small cities are governed differently from large ones. The only features that appear to be common to most cities of considerable population, wealth, and activity are these:

A mayor, head of the executive department, elected directly by the voters.

Executive officers or boards, some directly elected and others selected by the city legislature.

of two, but sometimes of one, chamber, elected directly.

Judges, usually elected by the people. Among the questions still unsettled even in the advanced circles of theoretical and practical students of municipal government are: the powers of the mayor and the relation between him and the city legislature; the comparative advantage of a bicameral and single-chambered council; the mode of electing the members of the council; and the way of rendering mayor and legislature responsible to the people.

To illustrate and bring home the existing diversity of practice, let us compare two municipal charters which are held to embody the ideas of progressive men, the charters of St. Louis and of the late municipality of Brooklyn (now a borough of Greater New York). In St. Louis the city legislature is composed of two houses. The members of the upper chamber are elected on a general ticket, while the lower house consists of delegates elected from the several wards. The terms of officials are long; there are checks on financial administration, and a statutory limitation of the debt. free the mayor from political and officeseeking pressure, important offices filled by appointment are not made vacant till the third year of his term. A veto power resides in the mayor, but it may be overridden.

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This system appears to have worked well, and has been commended to other municipalities groping in the darkness of misrule. But how puzzling it is to find a radically different charter also extolled by progressive men as the embodiment of the scientific and modern ideas of efficient municipal organization! In Brooklyn there was only one council. The mayor had large powers, and he had the fullest opportunity to organize an administration in accord with his policy. He appointed all executive heads of departments, no confirmation by the council being required. The charter, in fact, made the mayor directly responsible for the conduct of the government on its executive side and equipped him with the necessary power to discharge the task imposed upon him.

was the underlying principle of the Brooklyn form of organization. In the one case, there was an attempt to follow the model found in the Federal and State government, to copy the system of checks, counterweights, and balances. The prime object was to keep politics out of municipal government and to prevent corrupt deals and alliances by division of power. In the other case, the theory was adopted that a municipal government is at bottom a vast business corporation, and it was sought to apply thereto the principles of successful private corporations. Concentrated authority and responsibility, direct accountability of the executive to the people, were recognized as better safeguards against corruption and laxity than "checks" and divided power.

But the trend of reformatory opinion is at present unmistakably toward the second view of municipal government, the view, namely, that treats it first as a business corporation and secondarily as an agent and integral part of the State as a sovereign power. It is, clearly, a logical corollary from this view that the old plan of checks and division of authority must give place to concentration of power and responsibility. In other words, "personal government" is to be resorted to more and more in municipal spheres. We see in the charter of Greater New York a remarkable exemplification of the principle of personal government and centralized power. The municipal legislature has very limited powers, while the mayor gains all that the council loses. An enumeration of his powers would startle even a European, and yet it is from Europe that, after many changes, oscillations, and vicissitudes, American municipalities learned the principle of executive responsibility at the expense of legislative discretion.

But here a consideration of no little importance requires attention, a consideration elaborated and emphasized by President Eliot, of Harvard, in a suggestive essay on municipal government. If a city is to be regarded as a vast business corporation, and the task of directing, financing, policing, and developing it is to be treated as a new special science, it follows that men must be fitted and trained for this important work. Present haphazard and loose and crude methods must be abandoned, and men

must be selected for municipal service exactly as presidents and officers of private business enterprises are selected. "Politics" in the narrow no less than in the broad sense must be dismissed from municipal elections. The question is not merely of emancipating cities from the evils of machine rule, of bossism and its attendant vices, but also of banishing "national" issues from local contests. This latter doctrine is now making considerable headway, and in the late New York campaign the moral victory of Seth Low over the "regular" republican candidate afforded striking demonstration of the strength of the sentiment favoring the separation of local from State and national political questions. A candidate's view on indirect and direct national taxation, on tariffs, banking and currency laws, territorial annexation, foreign policies, and similar large questions, have little to do with the work of local administration, and the confusion of these irrelevant party questions with the qualifications requisite in municipal administrators is now seen to have stood in the way of the definite application of sound business principles to municipal affairs.

Another corollary from the doctrine that a municipality is to be regarded as primarily a business corporation is so obvious that one is almost ashamed to specify it. Yet the practice of our largest, proudest, and most progressive cities shows that the plain lesson has not been learned or else that it is as yet well-nigh impossible to reduce it to practice. Last December Boston elected twelve aldermen, six republicans and six democrats. Among these there was but one man, a lawyer of considerable local prominence, whom a private corporation disbursing as much money as does the city of Boston and transacting such important business would have found fit and qualified to serve on its board of directors or its board of managing officers. The others. were men without reputation, distinction, proved business ability, or education. Obscure, generally incapable, their only title to office was long service in ward politics. How long would a private corporation electing directors and officers on such principles stave off bankruptcy? In accounting for the failure of American municipal government, the kind and quality of rulers generally

chosen in most cities should not be lost sight of.

Closely connected with the question of structure or form of municipal government is that of function. The necessity

of genuine home rule and a duly-defined and delimited sphere of municipal government being admitted, it is natural to ask what that sphere shall be and what the proper limits to municipal activity are. We are familiar with the pronounced tendency toward what is called "municipalization of quasi-public industries," or the assumption by cities of a number of undertakings now left to private enterprise. The "franchise" question is now at the forefront of municipal politics, and many cities are wrestling with the alternative of direct city ownership and operation of gas and electric works, transportation facilities, lodging houses for the poor, and so on. The existing arrangements are demonstrably unsatisfactory and must be superseded. awakened public has been insisting on "compensation" for the valuable public franchises to quasi-public corporations, but compensation is not a final and scientific solution of the problem. Percentage paid on gross or net earnings by street railway, gas and electric companies, may or may not approximate a fair return to the municipality, while the benefit to the people is highly problematical.

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Where compensation is based guess-work, there is bound to be a conflict between the city and the companies. The former will go on raising the rate of taxation, and the latter will strenuously resist each advance as spoliation and confiscation. The companies are always under suspicion, and hostile relations come to be established between them and the citizens. Corrupt methods of influencing aldermen, attempts at securing perpetual or long-term franchises, and attacks upon home rule are inevitable under the "compensation" policy. In New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago we have lately witnessed exciting and bitter struggles in which franchises of enormous value were at stake. The bribery of public officials was openly charged by reputable and responsible citizens against street railway companies, and courts had to be appealed to for injunctions restraining aldermen from giving away privileges contrary to law and equity.

In the discussion of these franchise problems three distinct standpoints are disclosed. On the one hand, we have the school which welcomes every tendency toward municipal assumption of industrial functions as a step toward socialism. Just as there is a State socialism, so is there a municipal socialism, and the more practical and astute socialists (as, for example, the Fabians of England) realize that the way to socialism in the State at large lies through municipal socialism. Hence the concen

tration of socialistic effort on the task of extending the sphere of the municipality. The demand for municipal ownership and operation of street railways and lighting plants emanates chiefly from avowed socialists or people with strong socialistic leanings. Dr. Albert Shaw and the Rev. Washington Gladden, who are firm advocates of the "municipalization policy, would not, if fairly cross-examined, deny that they sympathized deeply with the socialistic philosophy of society. Dr. Shaw, indeed, says explicitly that "in the theory and art of modern citymaking, we must frankly acknowledge, collectivism has a large and growing place." Dr. Gladden, in his "Cosmopolis City Club," also expresses the conviction that we shall go far in the direction of collectivism. He says: "Our cities will municipalize certain important industries. That will be the beginning. Then there will be a strong tendency to extend this movement. It will be extended." It is certainly important for those who turn to the municipalization remedy to know the effect and outcome of their policy.

On the other hand, and diametrically opposed to the advocates of municipalization, are the individualists, who oppose socialism on a small scale as strenuously as they combat large-scale socialism. These insist that municipalization would be a remedy worse than the disease. They assert that management by officials would produce results far less satisfactory than those now obtained. That the existing arrangements are abnormal and temporary, they admit, but they claim that it is possible to get rid of present evils without surrendering the advantage of private enterprise or incurring the risk. of political waste and inefficiency. They believe that it is possible for honest and. intelligent administrators to negotiate.

contracts with corporations equitable alike to the city and to the investors. They hold that the competitive, public auction principle should have the widest application in the relation between municipalities and their beneficiaries.

Between these two schools stands the group of empirical reformers. To this group belong all who favor stringent regulations, periodical determination of rates, frequent examination of the business of franchise-owning corporations, short terms, and a popular vote upon every ordinance granting a franchise. To this group also belong those who believe in public ownership without public operation,- -a new course which is exemplified in the much discussed Philadelphia lease of the city's gas plant, and which has been tried in many English cities. This plan is likely to grow in public favor, and may be profitably studied. It contemplates the construction by the municipality of tracks and plants and the reservation of ownership, the operation to be entrusted to responsible private companies under a lease for a term of years, and the rental to the city to be fixed by public and genuine competition.

It is not easy to say just what remedial measures public opinion is ready to favor. In some communities opinion is more advanced than in others. In New York the new charter distinctly prohibits the granting of any franchises to quasi-public corporations using the streets for longer terms than twenty-five years. Such a limitation would be rejected in other communities as an "attack upon corporations" and a blow to invested capital. The Illinois legislature adopted last year a special law permitting municipalities to grant fifty-year franchises, shorter terms being claimed incompatible with the use of modern methods and improvements. On the other hand, while compensation is an established policy in Chicago and New York, Boston is far behind those communities in the matter of exacting a fair return for the privilege of using the public highways. The logic of events has been a great educator, and considerable good may be traced to the activity of the municipal reform leagues, but the question of municipal functions and activities is far less settled than that of municipal structure and organization.

If, however, a forecast may be hazarded, the following measures will doubtless at no distant day become vital "planks" in municipal platforms.

1. An amendment to constitutions or incorporation acts authorizing municipal ownership and operation of public "works" and street railways, and explicitly conferring power to condemn existing plants under eminent domain, fair compensation naturally being allowed. At present some courts hold that these powers exist in municipalities even in the absence of specific legislation, while other courts, insisting on strict construction, deny the existence of such powers where there is no clear grant of them. The use of the power is one thing, to be decided on grounds of profit and expediency; the possession of the power is a different thing, and there is no valid reason for withholding it.

2. The limitation of franchises to short terms, coupled with the reservation of the right to regulate rates or fares and accommodation.

3. A three-fourths vote of the city legislature to be required in the case of every grant of a franchise. An alternative to this is a referendum clause in every franchise-ordinance, giving the people the right to accept or reject the terms of the grant.

4. The publication of the real and exact facts as to the business of franchise-owning corporations.

5. The city to have a fair share in the profits, a fair return on the capital being allowed to the corporation, and stockwatering to be rendered impossible.

The adoption of these measures would make the resort to public operation unnecessary, and the principle of giving private enterprise the widest field and taking industry out of politics as far as possible would not have to be increasingly infringed upon. Unreasonable and selfish resistance to proper measures safeguarding the public interest cannot fail to react against private enterprise and to quicken the demand for municipal socialism.

We have only been able to touch lightly upon the municipal problems confronting us, but their nature and importance have, we trust, been sufficiently indicated.

VICTOR S. YARROS.