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eral Assembly to divide the gains secured by combination to delay or hasten, antagonize or promote measures proposed, according to which course would afford the best financial results to the parties to such arrangements.

Governor Stone of Missouri :

The most significant feature of this resolution (passed by the house of representatives) is the assertion that the State Board of Equalization at its last meeting "placed an additional value of $65,000,000 upon the farm property of the State" (instead of increasing the taxable wealth of the railroads until railroad property shall bear its equitable share of taxation). Acting upon this information the house has been unwittingly misled into making a statement which is without foundation in fact; and proceeding from that premise has been betrayed into an unwarranted criticism of the State officials. It is not true that the State Board of Equalization at its last meeting placed an additional value of $65,000,000 upon the farm property of the State. Nor was any such thing done at any former meeting of the board. It has never been done at all.

Governor McGraw of Washington:

It is recommended that early in the session you compel the consideration of appropriations essential to the conduct of public business and the maintenance of the public institutions, so that the legal expenditures of the forthcoming fiscal term may not be made, as they have been in the past, the riders of an overlapping omnibus bill, hurriedly enacted in the closing hours as the result of heedless compromises between sectional or official claimants for public funds.

The following passage in an otherwise serious message of Governor Waite of Colorado is significant of the estimate placed upon public life in the States:

I endorse the suggestion of the attorney-general for the abolition of capital punishment, and suggest by way of substitute, that the most hardened criminals be compelled to run as candidates for some State office.

This chapter may well be summed up with another quotation from Mr. Bryce :

The real blemishes in the system of State government are all found in the composition or conduct of the legislatures. They are the following:

Inferiority in point of knowledge, of skill, and sometimes of conscience, of the bulk of the men who fill these bodies.

Improvidence in matters of finance.

Heedlessness in passing administrative bills.

Want of proper methods for dealing with local and special bills. Failure of public opinion adequately to control legislation, and particularly special bills.1

The reader will judge how far an explanation of these things has here been given.

The practical result of these blemishes has been to create a large mass of State and local indebtedness which ought never to have been incurred, to allow foolish experiments in lawmaking to be tried, and to sanction a vast mass of private enterprises, in which public right and public interests become the sport of speculators, or a source of gain to monopolists, with the incidental consequence of demoralizing the legislators themselves and creating an often unjust prejudice against all corporate undertakings."

In leaving the discussion of State government, it will be noticed that the subject of the judiciary has been passed over in silence. Certainly this is not because it is the least important branch or has less bearing upon the main question, but because, as with the federal judiciary, the present writer feels unable to deal with it, and is compelled to leave it to more competent hands.

1 "American Commonwealth," Vol. I., Part II., Chap. XLV.
2 Ibid.

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CHAPTER XXIV

CITY GOVERNMENT

IT may be said that there is no subject with which

government is concerned in the United States more important than the government of cities. By the census of 1890 there were in the whole Union 124 cities having 25,000 inhabitants and upwards, and 646 cities and towns having from 2500 to 25,000. The facilities of transportation, and the comparative annihilation of distance consequent thereupon, have greatly increased the tendency to the accumulation of population and wealth in these centres and to render it more and more difficult to hold the forces of social conflict in check. The problem, however, is substantially the same as with the State and federal governments, how to establish executive power strong enough to insure order and security, to command public confidence, to give the freest possible play to individual liberty and enterprise, and to give preponderance to the widest and soundest expression of public opinion; and this uniformity of condition tends greatly to simplify the remedial treatment of the whole subject. Mr. Bryce says:

We find in all the larger cities —

A mayor, head of the executive, and elected directly by the voters within the city.

Certain executive officers or boards, some directly elected by the city voters, others nominated by the mayor or chosen by the city legislature.

A legislature, consisting usually of two, but sometimes of one chamber, directly elected by the city voters.

Judges, usually elected by the city voters, but sometimes appointed by the State.

What is this but the frame of a State government applied to the smaller area of a city? The mayor corresponds to the governor ; the officers or boards to the various State officials and boards elected, in most cases, by the people; the aldermen and common council to the State senate and assembly; the city elective judiciary to the State elective judiciary.1

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American municipal governments are of course subject to three general rules: that they have no powers other than those conferred on them by the State, that they cannot delegate their powers, and that their legislation and action generally are subject to the constitution and statutes as well of the United States as of the State to which they belong.2

It may be well to consider first the institutions upon which our local self-government was originally based. As Mr. Bryce points out, the township was in New England the keystone of the whole system.

The first New England settlers were largely townsfolk, accustomed to municipal life and to vestry meetings. They planted their tiny communities along the seashore and the banks of rivers, enclosing them with stockades for protection against the warlike Indians. Each was obliged to be self-sufficing, because divided by rocks and woods from the others. Each had its common pasture on which the inhabitants turned out their cattle, and which officers were elected to manage. Each settlement was called a Town, or Township, and was in fact a miniature commonwealth exercising a practical sovereignty over the property and persons of its members - for there was as yet no State, and the distant home government scarcely cared to interfere - but exercising it on thoroughly democratic principles. And though presently the towns became aggregated into counties, and the legislature and governor, first of the whole colony and after 1776 of the State, began to exert their superior authority, the towns (which, be it remembered, remained rural communities, making up the whole area of the State) held their ground and are to this day the true units of political life in New England, the solid foundation of that well-compacted structure of self-government which European philosophers have admired and the new States of the West have sought to reproduce. Till 1821 the towns were the only political corporate bodies in Massachusetts, and till 1857 they formed, as they still form in Connecticut, the 2 Ibid., note to p. 595.

1 Op. cit., Part II., Chap. L.

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basis of representation in her Assembly, each town, however small, returning at least one member.1

As has been said, this state of things continued till 1850 without any real need of government on the part of the State. The machinery of the town government is very simple and yet extremely interesting, because it presents a sharp line of division from every other form of government in the country. According to the Public Statutes of 1882 there are to be chosen at each annual town meeting by all the inhabitants from among themselves,

A town clerk.

Three, five, seven, or nine selectmen.

Three or more assessors, and, if the town deems it expedient, three or more assistant assessors.

Three or more overseers of the poor.

A town treasurer.

One or more surveyors of highways.

Constables, who shall be collectors of taxes unless other persons are specially chosen collectors.

Field drivers.

Two or more fence viewers, and

All other town officers.

The warrant issued by the selectmen shall express the time and place of the town meeting and the subjects to be then acted upon. The selectmen shall insert therein all subjects which may in writing be requested of them by any ten or more voters of the town, and nothing acted upon shall have a legal operation unless the subjectmatter thereof is contained in the warrant.

When the meeting assembles in the month of March the first business is to choose a presiding officer, who is known as the Moderator, and forms one of the most striking features of the town government. In Chapters VI. and XVII. has been discussed the difference between the position of the Speaker of the English House of Commons, and that of the Speaker in our Houses of Representatives, whether in Washington or in the State. It was argued that the former exercises the function of a pure presiding officer,

1 Op. cit., Chap. XLVIII.

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