The government of American cities; a program of democracy

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Preface

THE failure of city government in the United States is not a failure of democracy.

On the contrary it is and it has been due to the failure to apply to city government in America the same democratic principles that, so far as they have been applied, are the cause of good government in state and nation.

The nearest approach to a government representative of and accoimtable to the governed is( found in successfully governed cities. This book aims to show that the misgovemment of American cities is due not to the defects of democratic principles (nor to any dissimilarity in the principles of correct city government and the principles of civil government generally), but to an utter failure to apply them; that the successful conduct of city government, the world over, has been in direct proportion to the application of the fundamental principles of democracy, and that the experience of E^uropean cities has demonstrated that the complexity of city government is in the variety and magnitude of the interests aflEected by it and not in the nattu^ of the principles involved.

VI

Preface

So wlas the writer is aware, no book has been written kbout American city government from this pAmt of view. The following pages aim to show lAat it is the correct point of view, both as a deduction from sound political philosophy and as a demonstration from the actual municipal experience of Europe and America.

New York, January, 1909.

• 318

The Government of American Cities

Chapter I The City Problem In Europe And The

UNITED STATES

WHENEVER a country is sufficiently advanced in civilization to develop among its inhabitants a considerable traffic in the products of their industries, portions of the population will tend to mass in convenient centres of distribution and exchange. Especially is this the case when the traffic is large, not only among the inhabitants of the same coimtry but between them and the people of other countries. This massing of the people at centres of distribution and exchange creates cities, and the better the facilities of transportation, the greater is the traffic and the more numerous and more populous are the cities. Cities thus spring into existence in obedience to a fundamental economtc law. Whatever, therefore, increases the subjects of traffic and the facilities of transportation is certain to add to the number and to the population of cities.

Toward the end of the eighteenth centimy. began the use of steam as a source of power. Since that time, steam has multiplied, almost beyond reckoning, the products of human industry, has increased in numberless ways the ease and speed of transportation, and has been constantly creating new highways for commerce. It was inevitable that under the impulse of steam-power cities should grow rapidly in number and make constant gains in population over rural regions. During the last twenty-five years, electricity has added its potent influence and the tendency of the population cityward has been still further quickened. Nothing is more certain than that in all countries where steam and electricity are in general use — improving and increasing the facilities of transportation, multiplying the subjects of traffic, enlarging and emphasizing the influence of the factory method of production — a very laige proportion of their inhabitants will be city-dwellers. The phenomenon of city growth has not been an isolated one peculiar to the United States but has been common to all progressive peoples. The redistribution of the population, its massing in the centres of manufacture, distribution, and exchange, has

The City Problem 3

been even more striking in Germany and England than in the United States, *

In the countries of Western Europe at the opening of the nineteenth century, very little e£Eective attention had been paid to the matter of city government. Speaking generally, it was everywhere unsatisfactory. In some of them it was scandalously inefficient, and, in very many instances, it was not only grossly incompetent but notoriously and to all appearances hopelessly corrupt. Yet by the year 1880, when the people of the United States were beginning to be conscious that they had a grave city problem, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and England each had already found a way to provide its cities with honest, progressive, and efficient city government. Each of these countries had a national government unlike that of any of the others; in no two were the political habits and traditions of the people the same. Each coimtry had proceeded ia its own way and followed its own methods; their municipal systems were widely divergent, yet th^ cities were and are well governed. It is clear that difference in form or structural plan win not account for this result. There must have been in these different countries and cities the recognition and observance of basic principles upon which successful city government must rest.

' Pull details regarding this movement may be found in A- F. Weber's Grouith of Cities «« t!u Nitttteetah CerUury (New York. 1699).

Lrt us attempt to discover those principles.

gw govenunent. of whatever kind or form,

in onler to act at all, have some organ

-jliang whose function is to determine how

sImU *ct, that is, its policy, e. g., whether

tax shall be laid upon imports, a system

'*! highways be established, a postal service

^ miuntained, the navy be enlarged, harbors

^ujioved, transportation regulated, what shall

hA the monetary standard, what the powers of

wmiicjQg institutions shall be, — to mention only

(•w of the numberless questions of public

(xiicy.

On such questions, there are always

"l' ^jgcnt opinions. They give rise to divisive nolitical issues, and those who take part in deciding them frequently become strong partisans. ■niis is the policy-determining or political side o( the conduct of the government.

But when once the policy has been determined upon, the management of the custom-houses, the collection of the taxes, the actual construction of the highways, the management of the postal service, the building of the ships, the enforcement of the transportation regulations, the supervision of the banking companies, the maintenance of the monetary standard involve no divisive political issue. This is the purely administrative or^ as it might be called, business side of the conduct of government. It is not the opinions of the members of its administrative service upon matters of govermental policy which are

The City Problem s

Important, but their honesty, zeal, intelligence, and efEciency in the performance of the enterprise which the government has decided to undertake. Whether the members of its administrative service have or have not these qualities is often of great importance to the government in determining wisely questions of policy, but the decision of questions of governmental policy is no part of the duties of the members of its piuely administrative service.

This distinction between the policy-determining, or political, and the purely administrative side of government finds a close analogy in the conduct of every large business enterprise. The conductors, traffic managers, accountants, ticket agents, brakemen, track-walkers, superintendents of a railway company, do not decide whether or not the company's resources shall be used to extend the trackage, to build new bridges, to enlarge terminals; or whether additional lines shall be leased, or the capital stock increased, or more bonds issued. Their views on these matters of policy are purely personal and have nothing to do with the performance of their duties as members of the company's administrative staff. The engineer whose approval or disapproval of the company's policy affected in even the slightest degree the quality of his engineering work would be considered, and very rightly, as unfitted for his position.

The importance of recognizing this fundamental difference between the policy-determining 1 and the administrative sides of government and of keepii^ the two quite distinct in its practical conduct is especially marked in the case of a city government, for nine tenths of its activities are on the administrative side. In the practical conduct of city government, therefore, the quality of its administrative service is of a consequence very difficult to exaggerate. Some way must be found to keep politics out of its administrative service, if the govenunent is to be conducted successfully. Politics in the adnunistrative service of a city government is certain to demoralize that service. Prom any logical point of view, to permit politics in the administrative service of a city is precisely as absurd as would be the attempt to run a railroad by selecting or retaining trainmen, clerks, freight-agents, and engineers according to their views upon the various questions of policy that it was the function of the directors of the company to decide.

No one will dispute the correctness of these statements or the soundness of their logic so long as we confine ourselves to the realm of pure reason. But can they be put in practice in this busy world which does not occupy itself much with theorizing, and in which governmental and every other business ts conducted not according to any counsel of perfection but after any practical fashion which seems most avaUable at the moment? The answer is found in the history of the

The City Problem city governments of Gennany. Belgium, Holland, Prance, and England. That these countries in the practical conduct of their city governments have each recognized and applied these basic principles is one of the chief reasons why Dresden, Brussels, Amsterdam, Lyons, and Manchester, though each has a form of government widely different from all the others, is a well governed municipality.

Bulky volumes would be required to describe the working machinery of the various city governments in Western Europe. But the essentia] and controlling facts that explain why. though differing so widely in governmental framework, they are nevertheless alike in being well governed do not require lengthy statement.

City government, like all government, must perform two distinct functions:

1, It must have a policy adapted to the needs of the people governed; and since the primary purpose of city government is to satisfy the local needs, the policy of a city government must be adapted to the needs of the city.

2. It must provide a city administrative service manned by competent persons selected and retained with no reference to their views as to the public policy of the city government or any other government.

In Gennany, in France, in England, in Holland and in Belgium, the policy which controls the government of a city is not an imperial or national or other external policy, but a local policy adapted to the local needs of the city; the officials of the city's administrative service are selected because of their honesty and competence, and the limit o£ their tenure is determined by their efficiency and good behavior. Thus two basic principles which lie at the foundation of the successful conduct of any government and more especially of city government are not only recognized theoretically but are practically applied and enforced. This is not due to the compulsion of superior authority, or in obedience to specially

1 enacted statutes. Nor is there any formal prohibition of the performance of policy-determining and administrative functions by the same public officers. It happens more often than otherwise that the local legislature — and there is always a local legislature — in addition to its political policy-determining functions performs through its committees important administrative functions as well. It is not by virtue of enacting into law any special plan or scheme that these cities are well governed; there is a wide variety in the formal frameworks of their governments. But there is not one of these countries which has not discovered two prerequisites to the solution of its city problem: that each city should be governed according to the policy which suits its local needs; and should have a trustworthy, competent, and non-political administrative service. And each country in its owa way has successfully applied the discovery.

The City Problem 9

These countries have also recognized and success! ufly applied another important principle — namely, that city government is government and must therefore be clothed with power to satisfy the local needs of the city and that, in order to decide how it should exercise its local power, it must have some policy-determining organ or organs of its own.

In these coimtries there is no granting of powers to the city followed by curtailing or perhaps taking them away altogether. And each city government has a local legislature locally dected by the qualified electors of the city in local campaigns when members of the local legislature are practically the only elective officers to be chosen. The superior authority of the state, if there is occasion for its exercise, is exercised through administrative methods, and is kept within well defined limits.

To sum up, however divergent the cities of Western Europe may be in their governmental form and framework, in their practical working :

(i) Each is a local government clothed with powers to satisfy the local needs ; ' (2) Each is a local government conducted according to a local policy locally determined ;

(3) Each determines its local policy through the election of a local legislattire in a local political campaign turning upon local political issues ;

(4) Each has practically no elected city officials except members of the city legislature;

(5) Each has an administrative service, the members of which obtain and hold their positions irrespective of their opinions on either local or national political issues ;

(6) Each exercises its local powers without arbitrary interference from outside authority;

{7) The superior authority of the central govermnent, when there is occasion for its assertion, is exercised through administrative methods.

There is not one of these principles which has not been directly violated or heedlessly disregarded in the practical conduct of city government in the United States. The conclusion is irresistible. Where these principles have been applied, city government has been successful; where they have been violated or disregarded, city government has been a failure. Whether tested by European or by American municipal experience, the all-important character of these principles has been established. They are the basal underlying principles of successful city government.

The enemies of democracy can find no consolation or comfort in the fact that the cities of Europe have been well governed and the cities of the United States ill governed. For what constitutes democratic government? Not a particular form or structural plan, but the fact that the government represents the governed; that it is conducted according to policies which conform to the prevailing public opinion, de-

The City Problem liberately fonned and authentically expressed by those subject to the action of the government; that the persons clothed with governmental powers are readily and surely accountable to the governed for the use of those powers. Tested by these standards, the cities of Western Europe are much nearer to municipal democracy than the cities of the United States.

The European city is largely a self-governing community; the American city has been a subject community. In Europe the city has a local government clothed with large powers (and many European cities have governments clothed with all the powers) to meet the local needs of the city; these powers are exercised in accordance with a local public policy locally determined, and are exercised by local public officials responsible and responsive to the local electorate. The city in the United States has been a local government with inadequate power to meet the local needs of the city; and has had no effective means of compelling the exercise of even this limited power in accordance with local public policy locally determined ; nor has the local electorate been able to enforce responsibility for the conduct of its local public affairs.

In brief, the successful city governments of Europe have been striking illustrations of the beneficent effects of a practical, even if by no means complete, application of the principles of democracy to local government; and the city governments of the United States have been striking examples of the evils that result from the attempt to conduct local government in open and flagrant violation of the basic principles of democracy. Herein lies the true explanation of the contrasting municipal experience of Europe and the United States. Not the application of democratic principles but the disregard of them is the cause of municipal misrule in the United States. It is the constantly clearer discernment of this fact during the last twenty-five years that gives assurance that here also the cities will in time be well governed.

Chapter II Thb Bn6lish Municipal System ^

TO a citizen of the United States, the mtinicipal history of England is perhaps more informing and suggestive than that of any other of the cotmtries of Western Europe. It is not only that the political traditions and habits of the English people and of our own are derived from a common source, and that we thus understand the methods employed in England; but the mimicipal evils from which England was suffering when her present system of city government was established seventy years ago were even more grievous than those we are to-day confronting in the United States, and yet those evils disappeared under the operation of the Mimicipal Reform Act adopted in 1835. I* ^s noteworthy, also, that there has

> For detailed information on the matters dealt with in this chapter, the reader may be referred to Redlich and Hirst's Local GavemmefU in England (3 vols., London, 1904) ; to Webb's English Local Government (3 vols., London, 1906- 1908) ; to the chapters on municipal administration in Lowell's Government of England (a vols., New York, 1908); and to Munro's Government of European Cities (New York, 1909), Chap. III.

been no change in principle or method since that act was adopted. The English system has been eminently stable. From time to time new laws have been passed upon the subject of municipal government, but these have served to strengthen the original act and to enlarge the area of its application. In 1882, the law of 1835 and these subsequent statutes were recast into a general municipal code compact in form and containing 269 sections.

In 1835 each English city had its special charter. There was the same be^Rildering variety of structural plan that is found in the United States. Misgovemment and inefficiency were universal. Corruption was very prevalent. In the conduct of city government the will of the governed found little and usually no expression. ' To-day, more than one half of the inhabitants of England and Wales, exclusive of London which has a special government of its own, dwell in more than three hundred cities, large and small, each of which is to a marked extent a genuine self-governing community that conducts its local affairs successfully under the provisions of one general municipal corporations act. And, excluding London, this could have been said of every English city at any time since the system inaugurated by the Municipal Reform Act of

■ Sec, for abundant evidence on these points, the Report of llu Royal CommtisioH on Municipal Corporations, in the ParliameMary Papers for tSjj.

1835 was fairly established. This does not mean that each city is exactly like e\-ery other in the details of its administrative organization, — each city arranges these in its own discretion. — but it does mean that the English system of city government is at once simple and comprehensive, that it has successfully withstood the searching practical test of daily experience mider every variety of circumstance for seventy years, and has proved itself admirably adapted at every stage of their growth to the needs of cities of widely varying characteristics, small and large, maritime and inland.

The fundamentals of the English Municipal Code, its groimd plan, may be stated briefly. Each city is a corporation clothed with large local powers of government. These powers are exercised by a board, locally selected in the following manner: The city is ordinarily divided into districts, in each of which the qualified voters elect three members of the board, one each year for a term of three years. These elected members, called councillors, choose additional members of the board to the number of one third, called aldermen. The aldermen are chosen for a term of six years, and one half retire triennially. For example, if there are twelve councillors, these choose four aldermen, two each third year for a term of six years. The full board of councillors and aldermen is called the Council and chooses one o£ their own numi6 Goverament of American Cities bcr — or an outsider, although this is not usual — as Mayor. The Mayor, save that he is titular president of the Council and is ex o^kio a magistrate, has no greater power than any other member. The Code requires the Council to choose a town clerk and a treasurer and to appoint from its own membership a "Watch Committee" to control local police matters. * Such other officials as may be desired or needed are appointed and removed and their salaries and tenures fixed by the Council, which also has full power to meet every need or phase of local administration.

In substance and in eflect the English system commits the conduct of the local public affairs of each community to a central committee, or board selected by the locality to carry out the local will. There is no lack of politics or political partisanship under the system, but the politics are mainly local politics and the heat of the political campaigns is excited by local issues. The lo<^ election never occurs at the same time as any other election and there is only one elective office arousing any political interest, the councillorship. ^ The voter has therefore only to consider and decide upon the merits of candidates for this one office.

The election methods are very simple. The

■ The Edui^tion Act of igoi has also provided for an "Education Committee" to control the schools.

> Two auditors and two revising assessors are elected annually by the city at large.

candidate is nominated by filing with the town derk a paper upon which one elector proposes, another elector seconds, and eight additional electors endorse the candidate. When there is no burning local issue it sometimes happens that only one such nominating paper is filed; in which case no formal election is held and the candidate named in the one nominating paper is declared elected. This has occurred very frequently. The honesty and purity of the electoral methods are amply safeguarded. The ballot is a secret official baUot printed at public expense and furnished the voter within the poUing place. It contains the names of all the candidates alphabetically arranged under the title of the oflfice, without any designation of the political parties to which the nominees belong. The voter goes into a private booth and marks his preference, then comes out of the booth and deposits his baUot with the election oflficer. The counting and canvassing of the ballots are admirably provided for.

In practice, the members of the Council who render conspicuously good service to the locality are sure of a long tenure. They are elected and re-elected term after term. Instances are nimierous of members who have been in office continuously for twenty years or even longer.*

« See Professor F. J. Goodnow's article on "The British Municipality" in the recent Report o^ the National Civic Federation (3 vols., New York, 1907), vol. i.

The aldermen are usually men who have won

previous distinction as councillors.

The opportunities afforded by membership in these local boards have from the beginning attracted men of eminent ability, and the English city commands the services of highly competent and public-spirited men in its Council. It has been natural, therefore, that the powers granted to cities in the original Municipal Reform Act have never been curtailed and that subsequent legislation has granted additional powers. There is now scarcely any matter of important local concern except poor relief which is not within the jurisdiction of the city Council.

There has been another and most important result. The men of ability and reputation, elected to these local boards and charged with full responsibility to the local electorate for the exercise of large powers that directly and vitally aflect the local interests, have developed local administrative organizations based upon a thorough-going application of the merit principle in appointment, tenure, and promotion. This exclusion of politics from administration is the more noteworthy because it is due neither to any legal compulsion, nor to any formal or physical separation of the executive from the legislative department of the city government, nor to the mandate of any superior authority.

The Council of an English city through its committees directs the entire city administration.

It has complete power to organize the city's administrative service in any manner it chooses; decides into what departments that service shall be divided, establishes the jurisdiction of each, and fixes the duties, salaries, and tenures of the department oflficials. There is no administrative matter so large as to be beyond the scope of the Cotmcil's power or so minute as to escape its control. The Council has lacked neither the power nor the opportimity to use the administrative service for "political" ends; for the entire "patronage'* of the public service of an English city is at- the absolute disposal of its Council, every civil servant of the city is a subordinate of the Council without fixed term and removable at its pleasure, and no law prevents compelling every one of them to be an adherent of the political views held by the majority of the Council.

Neither has the Council been persuaded to keep the political and administrative sides of the city government thus entirely distinct because of any philosophical views on the nature of government and the differing nature of its political and administrative ftmctions. The exclusion of politics from administration has been due to the fact that the members of the Cotmcil could be held personally accotmtable by the local electorate for the success or failure of the local government. History shows that the possession of power, for the use of which there is an easily enforceable accoraitability to the persons granting the power, stimulates its possessor to study the interests of those who have entrusted him with the power and who may take it away. This principle has found full play under the English Municipal Code. The members of the Council are put there by the local electorate to run the city government and, under the simple electoral system that has been described, cannot escape full responsibility for success or failure. The responsibility rests upon them and upon nobody else. It was inevitable, therefore, that the able men who constituted the Council of an English city should recognize that in the administrative service of a city, as of any other corporation of which they were the directors, the views and opinions of a member of the administrative staff upon questions of corporate policy are matters of indifference when the faithful and efficient performance of his administrative duties does not depend upon them. In the administrative service of the English city, the Cotmcil has seen to it, as a matter of plain business sense, that every official should be selected, retained, and promoted for efficiency and good conduct without reference to his political opinions. And this is true not merely of one English city but of all English cities under the operation of the English Municipal Code.

The fundamental principles of democracy have been applied to the solution of the problem of

The English Municipal System ail city government with greater thoroughness in England than in any other country. The prevailing local public opinion on questions of local policy finds its expression in the Council, which is clothed with all the Icxral governmental powers | possessed by the city and whose members are responsible to the local electorate for the exercise of those powers.

The central government in England has found it entirely possible to secure from the cities due recognition of its superior authority in proper cases, and at the same time to preserve their character as local self-governing communities. The problem has been solved by the simple device of exercising the control of the central government through administrative instead of political agencies. In | legal theory the Parliament in England has even I more complete authority over cities than has the State Legislature in the United States, ' There is not a section of the Municipal Code which Parliament may not alter to suit its own views. And there is no grant of power to a city which Parliament may not withdraw or modify. The English cities, in legal theory, are even more liable to the evils of "special legislation" than are the cities of the United States. • But in England central administrative boards have been established with general jurisdiction over all matters as to which the central authority of the

> No written conetitutioa restricts the activity of Farliastate over the locality is to be exercised; and, where parliamentary action is necessary, it follows the lin^ laid down by these non-political administrative boards, whose expert and disinterested advice is frankly admitted to furnish much better and safer guidance for the determination of this class of questions than the opinions of members of Parliament who have been dected because of their views on national political issues. Here are some contrasting examples of the methods of exercising the authority of the state over cities in England and in the United States: In both coxmtries it is an integral part of the state policy that the power of a city to incur debt should be limited. In the United States, this is accomplished by provisions in the state constitution or by statutes restricting the debtincurring power of the city, usually to a definite percentage of the assessed valuation of taxable property within the city limits. New York City, for instance, found it impossible, because of such a constitutional restriction, to make suitable provision for the additional water supply demanded by its rapidly growii^ needs without first securing an amendment to the state constitution. This requires, in New York, favorable action by two successive legislatures and a subsequent submission to the voters of the entire state for approval or rejection. Yet the experience of the city had demonstrated that its revenues from the users of water had always been more than sufficient to pay principal and income of all bonds issued for a water supply. The necessary constitutional amendment was finally secured; but only at the end of a long and costly campaign lasting for years and beset with difficulties, — the city in the meantime barely escaping the disaster of having its water supply pass under the control of a private monopoly.