Municipal administration

Front matter

New ^otk

At GlorncU UnioerattB

3tl)aca. N. $.

Preface

Much has been written on various aspects and problems of municipal administration, and some brief general outlines have also appeared ; but nothing has thus far been published which can claim to be more than a partial or an elementary treatment, as indeed the authors would be the first to admit. This stage of fragmentary writing has been a necessary and an important one in developing the discussion and literary treatment of a new subject of large and growing significance. It would seem, however, that the time has now come for a more comprehensive and more systematic treatise, and it is as an attempt in this direction that the writer makes bold to present this work.

The title, " Municipal Administration," probably conveys a general idea of the subject to the minds of readers. Yet such is the vagueness and uncertainty with which words are used that it will be worth while to make the conception more exact by some definition of terms. Administration is a general term with the widest range of meaning, applying to the management of any kind of business. In reference to public affairs, administration is the detailed execution of general policies, the application of laws. It is to be contrasted and distinguished from legislation, and is indeed the work of public officials, established and set in operation by legislative measures. Municipal administration is that branch of public administration intrusted to municipal officials. The duties of such officials are almost exclusively of an administrative rather than a legislative character; and for that reason the title given is preferred to the less definite term "municipal government."

It is necessary, further, to note more carefully the scope of the word "municipal." In English and American law a

Ti PREFACE

municipality is any subordinate public authority created by the central government and vested with the legal rights of a corporation. The term applies to the local authorities in cities, villages, counties, special authorities such as school and park boards, and even to incorporated townships as in Massachusetts. In this sense, municipal administration would include the whole field of local government. But the local administration of public affairs in cities or urban districts is so strongly differentiated from that in rural districts, and is, moreover, so much the more important, that, by common usage, municipal is often confined to urban or city communities, and is so used in this work. There is indeed a further restriction by which, where there are several local incorporated authorities in a city, only one (usually the most important) is called the municipal corporation ; but it is impossible to recognize local variations of this kind, and municipal will be held to include all of the local public authorities in a city.

These definitions show that the book deals primarily with the cities of the world. But what constitutes a city ? Legal definitions vary widely in different countries and in the different American states; and the word is often applied to petty villages as well as to metropolitan communities. Moreover, the dictionaries in their attempts to express the general meaning of the word have used phrases so vague that they fail to convey any definite idea. There are, in fact, three essential elements which must exist to form a city, and all of these must be represented in the definition : (1) the geographical fact of a definite local area on which buildings are for the most part compactly erected ; (2) the sociological fact of a large community of people densely settled on the given area ; and (3) the political fact of an organized local authority or authorities controlling the public affairs of the community. Combining these elements, a city may be defined as " A populous community, inhabiting a definite, compactly built locality, and having an organized public authority." This statement includes all the necessary features which go to make up a city, while omitting

PEEFACE VU

the exact details of legal definition whicli vary so widely. Where necessary to establish a statistical standard, the writer believes a minimum limit of twenty thousand population is about the figure at which real urban conditions come into existence ; while urban communities of over one hundred thousand population may be classed as great cities. It will be noticed that the form of definition given emphasizes the fact of population, which is the most important element and the factor most often meant when the word "city" is used. But the order of phrases can be readily rearranged to represent the secondary meanings of the word.

Cities are the mark of civilization advancing beyond the stage of self-sufficing agricultural villages. The urban community is both product and sign of the division of labor into agriculture, commerce, and industry, since an essential element of the city as here defined is the absence of agriculture in the city proper ; and hence the need of trade in agricultural supplies to the city, which cannot long exist without a return trade of city products to the country.

The prime factors, too, in the development of cities are the development of commerce and industry. It is true some cities have been deliberately planted for military, administrative, or political reasons ; but these cities have no stable basis or permanence as a community, and can have none until they become commercial or industrial centres. A purely political or military city, supported by contributions either from the surrounding country or from outlying provinces, may be maintained only so long as the army holds its power or the government continues at that place.

The commercial and industrial city has a much more permanent position. It obtains the sustenance for its inhabitants not by forced contributions, but indirectly from its own resources and activities. It thus has a vitality of its own, and may maintain itself for centuries, as have Damascus, Marseilles, and Cadiz. The economic bases of city life are not, however, altogether immutable. The Otto-

VIU PEEFACE

man conquest, which closed the commercial routes from Europe to the East, caused the decline of Aleppo and seriously affected the prosperity of Venice. But such cases are rare; and the economic city usually persists from age to age.

It is due to the irresistible tendency of modern industrial development to mass population at trade and manufacturing centres that the nineteenth century, and especially the latter part of it, has seen the constant enlargements in the area and population of former cities and the appearance and rapid growth of new cities. In all the important countries of the world the rural district has become a town ; the town a small city ; the small city a large one ; the large one a metropolis.

At each stage of growth the need or the opportunity for exercising new public activities in order to satisfy local wants has been felt, while at the same time progress in technical efficiency has opened the way for further additions to the functions of government. Add to this the spread of democratic ideas, which has raised the concepts of human rights and human dignity, and has thus induced public bodies to extend their activities so as to elevate the social condition and the culture plane of the lower classes. From all of these causes the scope of all forms of public activity has been broadened and deepened ; and especially within the cities has the work of the municipal authorities expanded with stupendous increments far beyond even the startling development of cities and city population.

It is this recent and significant development of municipal activities which has made the question of municipal administration one of vital importance, and the study of it a subject worthy of the attention of students of political science.

The present work begins with a historical survey of cities and municipal government, treating briefly of ancient and mediaeval cities and more at length of the development during the nineteenth century. From the time of the Greek city-state, when the city was the sum and centre of political

PREFACE IX

life, the movement until the end of the eighteenth centuryis, on the whole, one of the growth of larger political units, which absorb many functions of the early city and subordinate the city to the state. But with the recent development of urban communities and municipal activities, the direction of the current has changed, and cities have again become important factors in the life of the times.

In the second part there is a general survey of the active functions of municipal administration. In this discussion two aspects of municipal activity need to be borne in mind. In the first place, the municipal authorities in many lines are acting as agents of the central government, performing what may be called state functions of local administration. In the second place, the municipality acts as a distinctly local corporation in serving the special local needs of the community. It is not possible to draw hard and fast lines in classifying the various functions into these groups. But in the main the municipality acts as agent of the state in reference to public health and safety, the work of charity and education ; while the various undertakings described in the two chapters on municipal improvements belong for the most part to the domain of special local functions.

The third part deals with the problems of municipal finance; and different chapters consider questions of expenditure, debt, income, and finance administration. In the fourth part the various methods and problems of municipal organization are discussed, with special reference to recent tendencies and proposed reforms in American cities.

No attempt is made to deal with the local politics of any particular city ; nor in the discussion of municipal functions can technical details of the various departments be given. The book aims rather to give a general knowledge of the whole field of municipal administration for those interested in public affairs, and at the same time to form the groundwork for more detailed investigation to those who make this a special field either for academic study or for practical work.

X PKEFACE

It is necessary to make clear the relation of some parts of the book to other published writings. Part II is to some extent a development from certain chapters which I prepared for a monograph on Municipal Functions, published in Municipal Affairs for December, 1898; and considerable data then used have been incorporated into the present work. A few other portions have appeared in much their present form. Chapter V, on American Municipal Development, is revised from an article in " A Municipal Program " ; the section of Chapter VIII on Police Administration appeared in the Political Science Quarterly for March, 1901; and Chapter XVI, on Finance Administration, contains large excerpts from a paper on that subject read at the meeting of the National Municipal League at Rochester, N.Y., in May, 1901, and published in the proceedings of that meeting.

The sources used in the preparation of the book are too numerous for mention here. They are indicated freely in the bibliographical references at the beginnings of the chapters and in the footnotes. Personal observation and investigation have also been made in a number of American and European cities ; and for aid in these researches my sincere thanks are due to many kind friends and public ofl&cials.

Part I Municipal Histobt Chapter I

PAGE

CHAPTER n Medieval Cities 19

CHAPTER m European Cities, 15th-18th Centuries 32

CHAPTER rV The English Boroughs 42

CHAPTER V Municipal Development in the United States ... 72

CHAPTER VI French Municipal History since 1789 103

CHAPTER Vn

German Cities in the Nineteenth Century .... 114

zi xii CONTENTS

PART II CHAPTER Vm

Police Administration, Fire Brigades, Health Departments, Building Departments, Economic Regulation.

CHAPTER IX

Charities and Provident Institutions . . . . ' . 182 Poor Relief, Pawnshops, Savings Banks.

CHAPTER X

Schools, Libraries, Museums.

CHAPTER XI

Streets, Bridges, Sewers, Scavenging, Baths, Parks.

CHAPTER Xn

Municipal Improvements. H 270

Waterworks, Public Lighting, Urban Transportation, Docks, Markets, Cemeteries, Municipal Ownership.

Chapter I

Authorities. — Maspeeo : The Dawn of Civilization. — Curtiub : History of Greece. — Grote : History of Greece. — Sobomann : Antiquities of Greece. — Mann : Ancient and Mediaeval Eepublics. — Mommben : The History of Rome; Boman Provinces. — Fowleb: The City-State of the Greeks and Romans. — Lanciani : Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries. — Lanciani : The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome. — Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. — W. Liebenah : Stadteverwaltung In romischen Kaiserreiche.

Although a striking characteristic of the nineteenth century, the phenomenon of great cities is by no means confined to this period, and such cities are to be found from the very beginning of recorded history. In the river valleys of the Nile and the Euphra,tes, where both fertile soil and easy transportation were at hand, the earliest civilizations developed the well-known cities of Thebes, Memphis, Babylon, and Nineveh, with other important places, whose names are perhaps not so familiar.

In her early history, Egypt was a self-sustaining and commercially isolated country ; and there seem to have been no important cities other than the two political centres just named — Memphis and Thebes. But when in later times foreign commerce and intercourse developed through the influence of the Phoenicians and Greeks, new cities arose : Kopton on the trade route from the Sinaitic peninsula to Libya, with Cosseir on the Red Sea as its shipping port ;

Sais and Naucratis on the Delta of the Nile, in connection with the trade of the Mediterranean.

Almost nothing, however, is known of what we would call municipal conditions in these cities. The centre of interest in Egyptian history is the monuments, which were not in the cities and were not municipal works.

The great Oriental cities of Assyria and Babylonia were for the most part palace cities, where the royal residence was the centre of the whole. Maspero names fifteen cities of ancient Chaldea, in two groups, southern and northern. The most important of these were Lagash and Uru, near the mouth of the Euphrates, and Babylon farther north. To the east of Chaldea, Susa, the capital of the Elamites, is said to have vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in antiquity and magnificence. As the lines of commerce from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean developed, Damascus began its important career, which has continued for so many centuries. Later, as the Phoenicians carried trade still farther west, their home ports of Tyre and Sidon grew to be considerable cities ; while the trading posts established along the Black Sea, on the Mediterranean, and even on the coasts of Spain and Britain, laid the foundation for future cities such as Paphos in Cyprus, Rhodes, Gades (Tarshish, Cadiz), and Carthage.

Little more can be said of the municipal conditions ia these cities than of the early Egyptian cities. It is known that in ancient Tyre the water supply was furnished by an aqueduct from the springs in the mountains, — probably one of the earliest instances of the kind. It may be assumed that in cities almost exclusively commercial in character, where political institutions were undeveloped, the range of public activity even for the local needs of the urban populations was extremely limited.

It was Greece that first showed the possibilities of the city in the political sphere. The city here was not merely a trading post, or the residence of the ruler of a large area, but the centre and sum of political life. The physical con-

THE CITIES OE ANTIQUITY 6

ditions of the country prevented for a long time the formation of large empires ; and each city was thus independent and self-ruled. Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Calchis, Phoecea, each combined both the economic and political features of city life. Our word " politics," indeed, comes from the Greek word for city, and means literally the public affairs of the city.

But the Greek cities were not alone those in Greece proper. Probably influenced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks early took to maritime employments, and more certainly imitated them in founding trade cities. By the eighth century B.C. the founding of Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor and the neighboring islands (Miletus, Ephesus) had gone so far that the ^gean might be regarded as a Greek sea ; and as the stream of emigration and commerce progressed further, still more new cities arose. Greeks founded the cities of Abydus, Cyzicus, and Synope, on the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmora ; and thence along the coast of the Black Sea appeared Trapezus, Phasis, Tanais, and Obia, trade centres for the products of Armenia and the traffic from the great northern rivers, now in Russia. Other lines of trade led to Thrace ; up the Adriatic to Corcyra ; to the Italian mainland at Cumse, Rhegium on the Straits, and other points on the Gulf of Tarentum ; to Sicily at Naxos and Syracuse ; and finally to Marseilles (600 B.C.).

These Greek colonies were not, like the Phoenician ports, simply trading posts with temporary settlements ; but, like the city-state in the home country, were permanent cities, political as well as economic centres. The cities of Sicily and Southern Italy became a Greater Greece (MagTva G-rcecia) beyond the seas. And although all the Greek cities were related by trading lines, and still more by their common civilization and common religion, yet each was an independent community, with a vigorous political life and a large sphere of public activity.

Of the Greek cities, Athens is undoubtedly not only the most important, but also the most studied and the best known. We can therefore take that city as exemplifying

6 MUNICIPAL HISTOEY

the highest development of municipal conditions at this period.

Like all the other Greek cities, Athens was not a municipality, but a city-state, and there was no distinction in public activity between these functions which we would now call municipal and those which we would call state or national. For our purposes, however, the distinction needs to be remembered ; and it is not necessary to consider here the Athenian system of judicial, military, and naval administration, or the regulation of economic activities. Of the functions now considered as properly municipal, police and sanitary regulation, if it existed at all, was extremely unimportant, but public works were undertaken to a large extent, and both charity and education were subjects of public action.

A public water supply existed at Athens from an early date, subterranean aqueducts having been built by the Pisistratidse (527-510 B.C.). Roads from Athens to the surrounding country were also built by the Pisistratidse with artistic monuments for milestones, bearing inscriptions in hexameter and pentameter. The port of Piraeus was systematically laid out with two main streets and a large central square for business, the most celebrated example of the kind in ancient times ; the work was done by Hippodamus of Miletus, who later laid out the cities of Thurii and Rhodes. The harbors and warehouses at the Piraeus were also owned by the government, and dues or tolls charged for their use by the merchants. There was also a large amount of public lands regularly cultivated, while the silver mines at Laurium formed one of the main resources of the government, until they were exhausted by the reckless system of mining employed.

Although so many of the sources of production were under public control, they were not operated by public officials, but were regularly let out on stated payments for longer or shorter periods to private capitalists who worked them for their own advantage, — early examples of the modern system of municipal franchises. There was indeed almost no public administration. Not only were the industrial enterprises of the government administered by private capitalists, but the taxes also were similarly farmed out, and the principle of personal service by private individuals was very largely used, — in the choruses at the theatres, in the public games, in the judicial administration ; and even in military affairs the furnishing of ships of war was a duty of wealthy citizens.

The system of public charities at Athens presents some peculiar features. The most important work of the kind was the distribution of imported grain to large parts of the population — a system often resorted to in other large cities in ancient times, and above all in Rome. Other aid was given by paying the poor for their services in the judicial administration, and furnishing them free seats at the great theatrical exhibitions.

Education was also under public control, especially that of young men in their duties as citizens; and closely connected with this was the physical training of the young men, with a view to military service. The higher education of culture and art was promoted in connection with the religious ceremonies in the theatres and temples ; and the results in the development, especially of the drama and sculpture, mark a record of achievement which no other people have attained. It has been suggested, however, that the lavish expenditures for the famous buildings on and around the Acropolis were, economically unsound, and helped to exhaust the material energies, and thus aided the decline of Athens.

A word as to Athenian finances. The principal sources of public revenue were : —

Revenues from public properties and industries ; revenues from courts, which yielded a considerable net income ; tribute from the allies ; customs on imports and exports ; octrois, duties collected at the city gates ; taxes on resident aliens ; and in emergencies, a direct property tax on all persons under the protection of the government.

The empire of Alexander differed from that of Persia, which it supplanted, in its development of commerce and city life. Alexander himself founded seventy so-called cities.

thus recognizing the autonomous Greek city-community as the basis of his empire, in contrast to the former village life of the East. These cities differed in one respect from the Greek cities of the preceding period: they were not independent states, and, although with power of internal self-government, were subordinate to the empire ; they were municipalities rather than cities, although the Roman name had not yet appeared. The ancient cities of Greece itself were also placed in the same subordination to the larger empire.

No single city could now secure for itself the protection from external attack which was necessary to render economic progress possible. A more extensive form of political organization was necessary ; and the city was superseded by the higher type of political life. But although no longer the organ for political and military administration, the economic importance and economic life was more fully organized, and given opportunities to develop with the powers of local government.

The new cities established by Alexander were deliberately planted ; and many were systematically laid out by Democrates the architect. The same policy was followed by the successors of Alexander in the various districts into which his empire was divided. Under the Diadochi (cir. 300 B.C.) there were two hundred so-called cities in the Hellenized world ; and although most of these were hardly worthy the name, there were many important places.

The two most famous cities of this period were Alexandria and Antioch. Alexandria was the centre of the grain trade from Egypt, and the emporium for products of India and Arabia coming by caravan and by sea from the Malabar coast of Hindostan to the harbors on the Red Sea constructed by the Ptolemies. The most important public works at Alexandria were the harbor and mole with its lighthouses, and the famous library. Antioch also was a commercial centre, for caravan trade from the East via the Euphrates. Rhodes, an old city, had risen to large importance, having succeeded to the naval supremacy which

Athens had lost; and the harbor of Rhodes ranks among the greatest public works of the time. The Greek colonial cities in the Mediterranean continued to be centres of industry and depots of commerce ; and, like the new cities were also centres of Greek learning, science, and art, which were extending Hellenic culture and civilization from Marseilles to Babylon.

Municipal development at this period consists entirely in the appearance of new cities. The public activities of the cities remained as they had been, — the construction of public buildings, harbors, quays, bridges, and aqueducts forming by far the most important functions. With all the activity in these directions, however, street paving seems to have been very exceptional, and street lighting as yet entirely unknown.

THE ROMAN PERIOD

The history of the expansion of Rome is the history of the conquest and foundation of a large number of cities; and in the Roman world there was an almost exclusive preponderance of cities and an absence of country populations and dwellings. The relation of these cities to the government at Rome at first varied widely. The neighboring Italian regions, which were first acquired, were treated rather as allies than as conquered districts. Each of the allied cities was under Roman rule in political and military affairs ; but each was allowed to maintain its own customs, and so far as possible its own constitution. The local magistrates preserved even a considerable measure of judicial independence ; and on the whole the communal autonomy involved much more real freedom than had been the case in Greece after the Persian struggle made the union of Greek cities necessary, for in Italy there was no tribute.

As the Roman power extended beyond Italy, the forms of conquest became more common. Nevertheless, the flourishing commercial cities, both Greek and Phoenician, thus included in the Roman dominion, preserved by treaty many rights and privileges. In some cases, as at Cadiz,

Marseilles, Messina, and Athens (the civitates foederatce'), these treaties secured to the cities a formal independence and a real self-government. In other cases, cities classed as immunes — such as Utica, Smyrna, and Ephesus — were free from fiscal burdens. A larger number, but mostly less important places, did not enjoy self-government, but were under the rule of prefects, and were subject to the burdens, without enjoying the privileges, of Roman citizens. Tribute was naturally continued from those cities which had formerly been subject to Carthage or Macedon, and was also required from other cities in conquered territory outside of Italy. In still another class were the colonies, or new cities, founded to secure a conquered territory by transferring groups of veteran soldiers, to whom lands were allotted as a reward for their public services. These new municipalities from the first enjoyed much autonomy; but the maintenance of good government there was considered a matter of imperial concern. They were under occasional surveillance, and the frequent rescripts of the emperors on their affairs gradually assimilated divergent customs.

These distinctions between cities gradually disappeared. The policy of granting the Roman franchise to the inhabitants of other cities than Rome was inaugurated by Claudius, carried on by succeeding emperors, and finally culminated in the notable edict of Caracalla (211-217 a.d.) which conferred the eivitas on all, both Latini and peregrini, under the sway of Rome. With this final step came the abolition of the exemption of citizens from taxation, and thus all cities were placed on a common basis. The Roman municipal town, thus evolved, has been defined in terms which answers almost perfectly to our present ideas, as " a community of which the citizens are members of the whole nation, subject to the same burdens, but retaining the administration of law and government in all local matters which concern not the nation at large." And it is interesting to note the close analogy between the legal concept of the Roman municipality and our own : in the required sanction of the State to its existence, in the power of the majority, in its fictitious personality.

and the consequent responsibility before the courts for the obligations of its officers, and in its property rights.^

The appellation of city was no less vague in the time of Rome than it is to-day; and local pride and the poverty of language bestowed the same title upon the metropolis of Rome and many a petty village. Ancient Italy is said to have had 1200 cities, Gaul could boast of an equal number, Spain exhibited a list of 360, Asia contained 500, and even Africa 300. ^ But using the word in the stricter sense in which it has been defined in these pages, the number and greatness of the cities in the Roman Empire are most significant. In the first century after Christ several cities of over 100,000 were in existence, while Rome has been estimated at from one to two millions, and Alexandria probably attained half a million. Even the latter figure was not reached again until the seventeenth century (by London and Paris), and the million mark not until the eighteenth century. In Italy, the splendor of ancient Verona may be traced in its remains ; yet Verona was less celebrated than Aquileia or Padua, Milan or Ravenna. In Gaul, were Marseilles, Aries, Nismes, Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Autun, Vienne, Lyons, Langres, and Treves, whose ancient condition was equal and perhaps superior, in Gibbon's opinion, to that at the time he wrote (1780). In Britain, York and London were seats of commerce, and Bath was celebrated for its medicinal waters. Carthage had risen in new splendor from its ashes. Capua, Corinth, and other cities in Greece were no mean places. In Asia were such important cities as Laodicea, Pergamus, Smyrna, and Ephesus. The capitals of Syria and Egypt (Antioch and Alexandria) held a still superior rank, looking down with disdain on a crowd of dependent "cities," and yielding with reluctance to the majesty of Rome itself.

As Athens was taken as the highest type of the Greek city, so imperial Rome stands preeminent among the cities of the Roman world, and a study of its municipal aspects affords lessons of interest and value. These show many features