parts of the same State, diversities due sometimes to the character of the population, sometimes to the varying intensity of party feeling, sometimes to the greater or less degree in which the areas of local government coincide with the election districts for the election of State senators or representatives. On the whole it would seem that county officials are apt to be chosen on political lines, not so much because any political questions come before them, or because they can exert much influence on State or Federal elections, as because these paid offices afford a means of rewarding political services and securing political adhesions. Each of the great parties usually holds its county convention and runs its "county ticket," with the unfortunate result of intruding national politics into matters with which they have nothing to do, and of making it more difficult for good citizens outside the class of professional politicians to find their way into county administration. However, the party candidates are seldom bad men, and the ordinary voter is less apt to vote blindly for the party nominee than he would be in Federal or State elections. In the township and rural school district party spirit is much less active. The offices are often unpaid, and the personal merits of the candidates are better known to the voters than are those of the politicians who seek for county office.1 Rings and Bosses (of whom more anon) are not unknown even in rural New England. School committee elections are often influenced by party affiliations. But on the whole, the township and its government keep themselves pretty generally out of the political whirlpool: their posts are filled by honest and reasonably competent men.

VIII. The apparent complexity of the system of local government sketched in the last preceding chapter is due entirely to the variations between the several States. In each State it is, as compared with that of rural England, eminently simple. There are few local divisions, few authorities; the divisions and authorities rarely overlap. No third local area and local authority intermediate between township and county, and similar to the English poor law Union, or District with its Council recently proposed in England, has been found necessary. Especially simple is the method of levying taxes. A citizen pays at

1 Sometimes the party "ticket" leaves a blank space for the voter to insert the name of the candidates for whom he votes for township offices. See the specimen Iowa ticket at the end of Chapter LXVI.

the same time, to the same officer, upon the same paper of demand, all his local taxes, and not only these, but also his State tax; in fact, all the direct taxes which he is required to pay. The State is spared the expense of maintaining a separate collecting staff, for it leans upon and uses the local officials who do the purely local work. The tax-payer has not the worry of repeated calls upon his cheque-book. Nor is this simplicity and activity of local administration due to its undertaking fewer duties, as compared with the State, than is the case in Europe. On the contrary, the sphere of local government is in America unusually wide, and widest in what may be called the most characteristically American and democratic regions, New England and the North-west. Americans constantly reply to the criticisms which Europeans pass on the faults of their State legislatures and the shortcomings of Congress by pointing to the healthy efficiency of their rural administration, which enables them to bear with composure the defects of the higher organs of government, defects which would be less tolerable in a centralized country, where the national government deals directly with local affairs, or where local authorities await an initiative from above.

Of the three or four types or systems of local government which I have described, that of the Town or township with its popular primary assembly is admittedly the best. It is the cheapest and the most efficient; it is the most educative to the citizens who bear a part in it. The Town meeting has been not only the source but the school of democracy.3 The action of so small a unit needs, however, to be supplemented, perhaps also in some points supervised, by that of the county, and in this respect the mixed system of the middle States is deemed to have borne its part in the creation of a perfect type. past an assimilative process has been going on States tending to the evolution of such a type.

For some time over the United In adopting the

1 Some States, however, give a man the option of paying half-yearly or quarterly. In many a discount is allowed upon payment in advance.

2 The functions are not perhaps so numerous as in England, but this is because fewer functions are needed. The practical competence of local authorities for undertaking any new functions that may become needed, and which the State may entrust to them, is great.

3 In Rhode Island it was the Towns that made the State.

4 This tendency is visible not least as regards the systems of educational administration. The National Teachers' Association of the U.S. not long since prepared an elaborate report on the various existing systems, and the more progressive States are on the alert to profit by one another's experience.

township system of New England, the north-western States have borrowed some of the attributes of the middle States county system. The middle States have developed the township into a higher vitality than it formerly possessed there. Some of the southern States are introducing the township, and others are likely to follow as they advance in population and education. It is possible that by the middle of next century there will prevail one system, uniform in its outlines, over the whole country, with the township for its basis, and the county as the organ called to deal with those matters which, while they are too large for township management, it seems inexpedient to remit to the unhealthy atmosphere of a State capital.

CHAPTER L

THE GOVERNMENT OF CITIES

THE growth of great cities has been among the most significant and least fortunate changes in the character of the population of the United States during the century that has passed since 1787. The census of 1790 showed only thirteen cities with more than 5000, and none with more than 40,000 inhabitants. In 1880 there were 494 exceeding 5000, forty exceeding 40,000, twenty exceeding 100,000. There are probably to-day (1888) at least thirty exceeding 100,000. The ratio of persons living in cities exceeding 8000 inhabitants to the total population was, in 1790, 3.3 to every 100, in 1840, 85, in 1880, 22.5. And this change has gone on with accelerated speed notwithstanding the enormous extension of settlement over the vast regions of the West. Needless to say that a still larger and increasing proportion of the wealth of the country is gathered into the larger cities. Their government is therefore a matter of high concern to America, and one which cannot be omitted from a discussion of transatlantic politics. Such a discussion is, however, exposed to two difficulties. One is that the actual working of municipal government in the United States is so inextricably involved with the party system that it is hard to understand or judge it without a comprehension of that system, an account of which I am, nevertheless, forced to reserve for subsequent chapters. The other is that the laws which regulate municipal government are even more diverse from one another than those whence I have drawn the account already given of State governments and rural local government. For not only has each State its own system of laws for the government of cities, but within a State there is, as regards the cities, little uniformity in municipal arrangements. Larger cities are often governed differently from the smaller ones; and one large city is differently organized from another. So far as 2Q

VOL. I

the legal arrangements go, no general description, such as might be given of English municipal governments under the Municipal Corporation Acts, is possible in America. I am therefore obliged to confine myself to a few features common to most city governments occasionally taking illustrations from the constitution or history of some one or other of the leading municipalities.

The history of American cities, though striking and instructive, has been short. Of the ten greatest cities of to-day only fourBaltimore, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia-were municipal corporations in 1820.1 Every city has received its form of government from the State in which it stands, and this form has been repeatedly modified. Formerly each city obtained a special charter; now in nearly all States there are general laws under which a population of a certain size and density may be incorporated. Yet, as observed above, special legislation for particular cities, especially the greater ones, continues to be very frequent.

Although American city governments have a general resemblance to those English municipalities which were their first model,2 their present structure shows them to have been much influenced by that of the State governments. 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 (described in Chapter XLI.) elected, in most cases, by the people; the aldermen and common council (as they are generally

1 The term "city" denotes in America what is called in England a municipal borough, and has nothing to do with either size or antiquity. The constitution or frame of government of a city, which is always given by a State statute, general or special, is called its charter.

2 American municipalities have, of course, never been, since the Revolution, close corporations like most English boroughs before the Act of 1835.