the control of the police by city politicians has been deemed too dangerous to be suffered to remain in their hands. And he will contrast what may be called the political character of the whole city constitution with the somewhat simpler and less ambitious, though also less democratic arrangements, which have been found sufficient for the management of European cities.

CHAPTER LI

THE WORKING OF CITY GOVERNMENTS

Two tests of practical efficiency may be applied to the government of a city: What does it provide for the people, and what does it cost the people? Space fails me to apply in detail the former of these tests, by showing what each city does or omits to do for its inhabitants; so I must be content with observing that in the United States generally constant complaints are directed against the bad paving and cleansing of the streets, the non-enforcement of the laws forbidding gambling and illicit drinking, and in some places against the sanitary arrangements and management of public buildings and parks. It would appear that in the greatest cities there is far more dissatisfaction than exists with the municipal administration in such cities as Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Dublin.

The following indictment of the government of Philadelphia is, however, exceptional in its severity, and however well founded as to that city, must not be taken to be typical. A memorial presented to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1883 by a number of the leading citizens of the Quaker City contained these words :

"The affairs of the city of Philadelphia have fallen into a most deplorable condition. The amounts required annually for the payment of interest upon the funded debt and current expenses render it necessary to impose a rate of taxation which is as heavy as can be borne.

"In the meantime the streets of the city have been allowed to fall into such a state as to be a reproach and a disgrace. Philadelphia is now recog nized as the worst-paved and worst-cleaned city in the civilized world.

"The water supply is so bad that during many weeks of the last winter it was not only distasteful and unwholesome for drinking, but offensive for bathing purposes.

"The effort to clean the streets was abandoned for months, and no attempt

was made to that end until some public-spirited citizens, at their own expense, cleaned a number of the principal thoroughfares.

"The system of sewerage and the physical condition of the sewers is notoriously bad-so much so as to be dangerous to the health and most offensive to the comfort of our people.

"Public work has been done so badly that structures have had to be renewed almost as soon as finished. Others have been in part constructed at enormous expense, and then permitted to fall to decay without completion.

"Inefficiency, waste, badly-paved and filthy streets, unwholesome and offensive water, and slovenly and costly management, have been the rule for years past throughout the city government." 1

In most of the points comprised in the above statement, Philadelphia was probably at that date-for her government has since been reformed-among the least fortunate of American cities. He, however, who should interrogate one of the "good citizens" of Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, would have heard then, and would hear now, similar complaints, some relating more to the external condition of the city, some to its police administration, but all showing that the objects for which municipal government exists have been very imperfectly attained.

The other test, that of expense, is easily applied. Both the debt and the taxation of American cities have risen with unprecedented rapidity, and now stand at an alarming figure.

A table of the increase of population, valuation, taxation, and debt, in fifteen of the largest cities of the United States, from 1860 to 1875 shows the following result:

Looking at some individual cases, we find that the debt rose as follows:

:

1 The New York Commission of 1876 described in equally dark colours the management of that city.-Page 5 of Report.

2 Municipal Development of Philadelphia, by Messrs. Allinson and Penrose, p. 275.

3 Article "Cities" (by Mr. S. Stern) in Amer. Cyclop. of Polit. Science.

As respects current expenditure, New York in 1884 spent on current city purposes, exclusive of payments on account of interest on debt, sinking fund, and maintenance of judiciary, the sum of $20,232,786-equal to $16.76 (£3: 8s.) for each inhabitant (census of 1880). In Boston, in the same year, the city expenditure was $9,909,019-equal to $27.30 (£5: 9:3) for each inhabitant (census of 1880). It is of course true that much of this debt is represented by permanent improvements, yet for another large, and in some cities far larger, part there is nothing to show; it is due to simple waste or (as in New York) to malversation on the part of the municipal authorities.1

There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption, and mismanagement which mark the administrations of most of the great cities. For these evils are not confined to one or two cities. The commonest mistake of Europeans who talk about America is to assume that the political vices of New York are found everywhere. The next most common is to suppose that they are found nowhere else. In New York they have revealed themselves on the largest scale. They are "gross as a mountain, monstrous, palpable." But there is not a city with a population exceeding 200,000 where the poison germs have not sprung into a vigorous life; and in some of the smaller ones, down to 70,000, it needs no microscope to note the results of their growth. Even in cities of the third rank similar phenomena may occasionally be discerned, though there, as some one has said, the jet black of New York or San Francisco dies away into a harmless gray.

For evils which appear wherever a large population is densely aggregated, there must be some general and widespread causes. What are these causes? Adequately to explain them would be to anticipate the account of the party system to be given in the latter part of this volume, for it is that party system which has, not perhaps created, but certainly enormously aggravated them,

1 Mr. Stern observes: "The cost of opening or improving highways and of placing sewers in streets is of course not included in this vast aggregate of moneys annually levied and debt rolled up, because the cost of those improvements is levied directly upon the land by way of assessments, and they never figure as part of the ordinary expenditure of the city."--Article "Cities," ut supra.

and impressed on them their specific type. I must therefore restrict myself for the present to a brief enumeration of the chief sources of the malady, and the chief remedies that have been suggested for or applied to it. No political subject has been so copiously discussed of late years in America by able and experienced publicists, nor can I do better than present the salient facts in the words which some of these men, speaking in a responsible position, have employed.

The New York commissioners of 1876 appointed "to devise a plan for the government of cities in the State of New York," sum up the mischief as follows:-2

"1. The accumulation of permanent municipal debt: In New York it was, in 1840, $10,000,000; in 1850, $12,000,000; in 1860, $18,000,000; in 1870, $73,000,000; in 1876, $113,000,000.3

"2. The excessive increase of the annual expenditure for ordinary purposes: In 1816 the amount raised by taxation was less than per cent on the taxable property; in 1850, 1.13 per cent; in 1860, 169 per cent; in 1870, 2:17 per cent; in 1876, 2.67 per cent. The increase in the annual expenditure since 1850, as compared with the increase of population, is more than 400 per cent, and as compared with the increase of taxable property, more than 200 per cent."

...

They suggest the following as the causes :

1. Incompetent and unfaithful governing boards and officers.

1 See Part III., and especially Chapters LXII. and LXIII. See also the chapters in Vol. II. on the Tweed Ring in New York City, and the Gas Ring in Philadelphia. The full account given in those chapters of the phenomena of municipal misgovernment in the two largest cities in the United States seems to dispense me from the duty of here describing those phenomena in general.

2 The commission, of which Mr. W. M. Evarts (now senator from New York) was chairman, included some of the ablest men in the State, and its report, presented 6th March 1877, may be said to have become classical.

3 The New York commissioners say: "The magnitude and rapid increase of this debt are not less remarkable than the poverty of the results exhibited as the return for so prodigious an expenditure. It was abundantly sufficient for the construction of all the public works of a great metropolis for a century to come, and to have adorned it besides with the splendours of architecture and art. Instead of this, the wharves and piers are for the most part temporary and perishable structures; the streets are poorly paved; the sewers in great measure imperfect, insufficient, and in bad order; the public buildings shabby and inadequate; and there is little which the citizen can regard with satisfaction, save the aqueduct and its appurtenances and the public park. Even these should not be said to be the product of the public debt; for the expense occasioned by them is, or should have been, for the most part already extinguished. In truth, the larger part of the city debt represents a vast aggregate of moneys wasted, embezzled, or misapplied." 2 R

VOL. I