Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins Part 15

14. What abuses crept into the government of many of the English cities?

15. What was the Puritan att.i.tude towards such abuses?

16. Give an account of the government of New York city:--

a. The charter of 1686.

b. The governing corporation.

c. The public land.

d. The city's privileges as a county.

e. Officers by election and by appointment.

f. Judicial functions.

g. Martial law.

h. The charter of 1821.

17. Give an account of the government of Philadelphia:--

a. The governments after which it was patterned.

b. The viciousness of the system adopted.

c. The legislative interference that was thus provoked.

d. The division of responsibility and the results of such division.

e. The nature of the changes made in 1789.

18. Why are the traditions of good government lacking in the older American cities?

Section 3. The Government of Cities in the United States.

[Sidenote: Several features of our city governments.]

At the present day American munic.i.p.al governments are for the most part constructed on the same general plan, though with many variations in detail. There is an executive department, with the mayor at its head. The mayor is elected voters of the city, and holds office generally for one year, but sometimes for two or three years, and in St. Louis and Philadelphia even for four years. Under the mayor are various heads of departments,--street commissioners, a.s.sessors, overseers of the poor, etc.,--sometimes elected by the citizens, sometimes appointed by the mayor or the city council. This city council Is a legislative body, usually consisting of two chambers, the aldermen and the common council, elected by the citizens; but in many small cities, and a few of the largest,--such as New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco,--there is but one such chamber. Then there are city judges, sometimes appointed by the governor of the state, to serve for life or during good behaviour, but usually elected by the citizens for short terms.

All appropriations of money for city purposes are made by the city council; and as a general rule this council has some control over the heads of executive departments, which it exercises through committees.

Thus there may be a committee upon streets, upon public buildings, upon parks or almshouses or whatever the munic.i.p.al government is concerned with. The head of a department is more or less dependent upon his committee, and in practice this is found to divide and weaken responsibility. The heads of departments are apt to be independent of one another, and to owe no allegiance in common to any one. The mayor, when he appoints them, usually does so subject to the approval, of the city council or of one branch of it. The mayor is usually not a member of the city council, but can veto its enactments, which however can be pa.s.sed over his veto by a two thirds majority.

[Sidenote: They do not seem to work well.]

[Sidenote: some difficulties to be stated.]

City governments thus const.i.tuted are something like state governments in miniature. The relation of the mayor to the city council is somewhat like that of the governor to the state legislature, and of the president to the national congress. In theory nothing could well be more republican, or more unlike such city governments as those of New York and Philadelphia before the Revolution. Yet in practice it does not seem to work well. New York and Philadelphia seem to have heard as many complaints in the nineteenth century as in the eighteenth, and the same kind of complaints,--of excessive taxation, public money wasted or embezzled, ill-paved and dirty streets, inefficient police, and so on to the end of the chapter. In most of our large cities similar evils have been witnessed, and in too many of the smaller ones the trouble seems to be the same in kind, only less in degree. Our republican government, which, after making all due allowances, seems to work remarkably well in rural districts, and in the states, and in the nation, has certainly been far less successful as applied to cities. Accordingly our cities have come to furnish topics for reflection to which writers and orators fond of boasting the unapproachable excellence of American inst.i.tutions do not like to allude. Fifty years ago we were wont to speak of civil government in the United States as if it had dropped from heaven or had been specially created by some kind of miracle upon American soil; and we were apt to think that in mere republican forms there was some kind of mystic virtue which made them a panacea for all political evils. Our later experience with cities has rudely disturbed this too confident frame of mind. It has furnished facts which do not seem to fit our self-complacent theory, so that now our writers and speakers are inclined to vent their spleen upon the unhappy cities, perhaps too unreservedly. We hear them called "foul sinks of corruption" and "plague spots on our body politic." Yet in all probability our cities are destined to increase in number and to grow larger and larger; so that perhaps it is just as well to consider them calmly, as presenting problems which had not been thought of when our general theory of government was first worked out a hundred years ago, but which, after we have been sufficiently taught by experience, we may hope to succeed in solving, just as we have heretofore succeeded in other things. A general discussion of the subject does not fall within the province of this brief historical sketch. But our account would be very incomplete if we were to stop short of mentioning some of the recent attempts that have been made toward reconstructing our theories of city government and improving its practical working. And first, let us point out a few of the peculiar difficulties of the problem, that we may see why we might have been expected, up to the present time, to have been less successful in managing our great cities than in managing our rural communities, and our states, and our nation.

[Sidenote: Rapid growth of American cities.]

In the first place, the problem is comparatively new and has taken us unawares. At the time of Was.h.i.+ngton's inauguration to the presidency there were no large cities in the United States. Philadelphia had a population of 42,000; New York had 33,000; Boston, which came next, with 18,000, was not yet a city. Then came Baltimore, with 13,000; while Brooklyn was a village of 1,600 souls. Now these five cities have a population of more than 4,000,000, or more than that of the United States in 1789. And consider how rapidly new cities have been added to the list. One hardly needs to mention the most striking cases, such as Chicago, with 4,000 inhabitants in 1840. and at least 1,000,000 in 1890; or Denver, with its miles of handsome streets and shops, and not one native inhabitant who has reached his thirtieth birthday. Such facts are summed up in the general statement that, whereas in 1790 the population of the United States was scarcely 4,000,000, and out of each 100 inhabitants only 3 dwelt in cities and the other 97 in rural places; on the other hand in 1880, when the population was more than 50,000,000, out of each 100 inhabitants 23 dwelt in cities and 77 in rural places.

But duly to appreciate the rapidity of this growth of cities, we must observe that most of it has been subsequent to 1840. In 1790 there were six towns in the United States that might be ranked as cities from their size, though to get this number we must include Boston. In 1800 the number was the same. By 1810 the number had risen from 6 to 11; by 1820 it had reached 13; by 1830 this thirteen had doubled and become 26; and in 1840 there were 44 cities altogether. The urban population increased from 210,873 in 1800 to 1,453,994 in 1840. But between 1840 and 1880 the number of new cities which came into existence was 242, and the urban population increased to 11,318,547. Nothing like this was ever known before in any part of the world, and perhaps it is not strange that such a tremendous development did not find our methods of government fully prepared to deal with it.

[Sidenote: Want of practical foresight.]

This rapidity of growth has entailed some important consequences. In the first place it obliges the city to make great outlays of money in order to get immediate results. Public works must be undertaken with a view to quickness rather than thoroughness. Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be done over again. Such conditions of imperative haste increase the temptations to dishonesty as well as the liability to errors of judgment on the part of the men who administer the public funds.[10] Then the rapid growth of a city, especially of a new city, requiring the immediate construction of a certain amount of public works, almost necessitates the borrowing of money, and debt means heavy taxes. It is like the case of a young man who, in order to secure a home for his quickly growing family, buys a house under a heavy mortgage. Twice a year there comes in a great bill for interest, and in order to meet it he must economize in his table or now and then deny himself a new suit of clothes. So if a city has to tax heavily to pay its debts, it must cut down its current expenses somewhere, and the results are sure to be visible in more or less untidiness and inefficiency. Mr. Low tells us that "very few of our American cities have yet paid in full the cost of their original water-works." Lastly, much wastefulness results from want of foresight. It is not easy to predict how a city will grow, or the nature of its needs a few years hence. Moreover, even when it is easy enough to predict a result, it is not easy to secure practical foresight on the part of a city council elected for the current year. Its members are afraid of making taxes too heavy this year, and considerations of ten years hence are apt to be dismissed as "visionary." It is always hard for us to realize how terribly soon ten years hence will be here.

The habit of doing things by halves has been often commented on (and, perhaps, even more by our own writers than by foreigners) as especially noticeable in America. It has doubtless been fostered by the conditions which in so many cases have made it absolutely necessary to adopt temporary makes.h.i.+fts. These conditions have produced a certain habit of mind.

[Footnote 10: This and some of the following considerations have been ably set forth and ill.u.s.trated by Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia College, and lately mayor of Brooklyn, in an address at Johns Hopkins University, published in _J. H. U. Studies, Supplementary Notes_, no. 4.]

[Sidenote: Growth in complexity of government in cities.]

Let us now observe that as cities increase in size the amount of government that is necessary tends in some respects to increase.

Wherever there is a crowd there is likely to be some need of rules and regulations. In the country a man may build his house pretty much as he pleases; but in the city he may be forbidden to build it of wood, and perhaps even the thickness of the party walls or the position of the chimneys may come in for some supervision on the part of the government.

For further precaution against spreading fires, the city has an organized force of men, with costly engines, engine-houses, and stables.

In the country a board of health has comparatively little to do; in the city it is often confronted with difficult sanitary problems which call for highly paid professional skill on the part of physicians and chemists, architects and plumbers, masons and engineers. So, too, the water supply of a great city is likely to be a complicated business, and the police force may well need as much, management as a small army. In short, with a city, increase in size is sure to involve increase in complexity of organization, and this means a vast increase in the number of officials for doing the work and of details to be superintended. For example, let us enumerate the executive department and officers of the city of Boston at the present time.

[Sidenote: Munic.i.p.al officers in Boston.]

There are three street commissioners with power to lay out streets and a.s.sess damages thereby occasioned. These are elected by the people. The following officers are appointed by the mayor, with the concurrence of the aldermen: a superintendent of streets, an inspector of buildings, three commissioners each for the fire and health departments, four overseers of the poor, besides a board of nine directors for the management of almshouses, houses of correction, lunatic hospital, etc.; a city hospital board of five members, five trustees of the public library, three commissioners each for parks and water-works; five chief a.s.sessors, to estimate the value of property and a.s.sess city, county, and state taxes; a city collector, a superintendent of public buildings, five trustees of Mount Hope Cemetery, six sinking fund commissioners, two record commissioners, three registrars of voters, a registrar of births, deaths, and marriages, a city treasurer, city auditor, city solicitor, corporation counsel, city architect, city surveyor, superintendent of Faneuil Hall Market, superintendent of street lights, superintendent of sewers, superintendent of printing, superintendent of bridges, five directors of ferries, harbour master and ten a.s.sistants, water registrar, inspector of provisions, inspector of milk and vinegar, a sealer and four deputy sealers of weights and measures, an inspector of lime, three inspectors of petroleum, fifteen inspectors of pressed hay, a culler of hoops and staves, three fence-viewers, ten field-drivers and pound-keepers, three surveyors of marble, nine superintendents of hay scales, four measurers of upper leather, fifteen measurers of wood and bark, twenty measurers of grain, three weighers of beef, thirty-eight weighers of coal, five weighers of boilers and heavy machinery, four weighers of ballast and lighters, ninety-two undertakers, 150 constables, 968 election officers and their deputies. A few of these officials serve without pay, some are paid by salaries fixed by the council, some by fees. Besides these there is a clerk of the common council elected by that body, and also the city clerk, city messenger, and clerk of committees, in whose election both branches of the city council concur. The school committee, of twenty-four members, elected by the people, is distinct from the rest of the city government, and so is the board of police, composed of three commissioners appointed by the state executive.[11]

[Footnote 11: Bugbee, "The City Government of Boston," _J.H.U.

Studies_, V., iii.]

[Sidenote: How city government comes to be a mystery.]

This long list may serve to give some idea of the mere quant.i.ty of administrative work required in a large city. Obviously under such circ.u.mstances city government must become more or less of a mystery to the great ma.s.s of citizens. They cannot watch its operations as the inhabitants of a small village can watch the proceedings of their towns.h.i.+p and county governments. Much work must go on which cannot even be intelligently criticised without such special knowledge as it would be idle to expect in the average voter, or perhaps in any voter.

It becomes exceedingly difficult for the taxpayer to understand just what his money goes for, or how far the city expenses might reasonably be reduced; and it becomes correspondingly easy for munic.i.p.al corruption to start and acquire a considerable headway before it can be detected and checked.

[Sidenote: In some respects it is more of a mystery that state and national government.]

In some respects city government is harder to watch intelligently than the government of the state or of the nation. For these wider governments are to some extent limited to work of general supervision.

As compared with the city, they are more concerned with the establishment and enforcement of certain general principles, and less with the administration of endlessly complicated details. I do not mean to be understood as saying that there is not plenty of intricate detail about state and national governments. I am only comparing one thing with another, and it seems to me that one chief difficulty with city government is the bewildering vastness and multifariousness of the details with which it is concerned. The modern city has come to be a huge corporation for carrying on a huge business with many branches, most of which call for special apt.i.tude and training.

[Sidenote: The mayor at first had too little power.]

As these points have gradually forced themselves upon public attention there has been a tendency in many of our large cities toward remodeling their governments on new principles. The most noticeable feature of this tendency is the increase in the powers of the mayor.

A hundred years ago our legislators and const.i.tution-makers were much afraid of what was called the "one-man power." In nearly all the colonies a chronic quarrel had been kept up between the governors appointed by the king and the legislators elected by the people, and this had made the "one-man power" very unpopular. Besides, it was something that had been unpopular in ancient Greece and Rome, and it was thought to be essentially unrepublican in principle. Accordingly our great grandfathers preferred to entrust executive powers to committees rather than to single individuals; and when they a.s.signed an important office to an individual they usually took pains to curtail its power and influence. This disposition was visible in our early attempts to organize city governments like little republics.

First, in the board of aldermen and the common council we had a two-chambered legislature. Then, lest the mayor should become dangerous, the veto power was at first generally withheld from him, and his appointments of executive officers needed to be confirmed by at least one branch of the city council. These executive officers, moreover, as already observed, were subject to more or less control or oversight from committees of the city council.

[Sidenote: Scattering and weakening of responsibility.]

Now this system, in depriving the mayor of power, deprived him of responsibility, and left the responsibility nowhere in particular. In making appointments the mayor and council would come to some sort of compromise with each other and exchange favours. Perhaps for private reasons incompetent or dishonest officers would get appointed, and if the citizens ventured to complain the mayor would say that he appointed as good men as the council could be induced to confirm, and the council would declare their willingness to confirm good appointments if the mayor could only be persuaded to make them.

[Sidenote: Committees inefficient for executive purposes.]

Then the want of subordination of the different executive departments made it impossible to secure unity of administration or to carry out any consistent and generally intelligible policy. Between the various executive officers and visiting committees there was apt to be a more or less extensive interchange of favours, or what is called "log-rolling;" and sums of money would be voted by the council only thus to leak away in undertakings the propriety or necessity of which was perhaps hard to determine. There was no responsible head who could be quickly and sharply called to account. Each official's hands were so tied that whatever went wrong he could declare that it was not his fault. The confusion was enhanced by the practice of giving executive work to committees or boards instead of single officers. Benjamin Franklin used to say, if you wish to be sure that a thing is done, go and do it yourself. Human experience certainly proves that this is the only absolutely safe way. The next best way is to send some competent person to do it for you; and if there is no one competent to be had, you do the next best thing and entrust the work to the least incompetent person you can find. If you entrust it to a committee your prospect of getting it done is diminished and it grows less if you enlarge your committee. By the time you have got a group of committees, independent of one another and working at cross purposes, you have got d.i.c.kens's famous Circ.u.mlocution Office, where the great object in life was "how not to do it."

[Sidenote 1: Increase of city debts.]

[Sidenote 2: Attempt to cure the evil by state interference; experience of New York.]

Amid the general dissatisfaction over the extravagance and inefficiency of our city governments, people's attention was first drawn to the rapid and alarming increase of city indebtedness in various parts of the country. A heavy debt may ruin a city as surely as an individual, for it raises the rate of taxation, and thus, as was above pointed out, it tends to frighten people and capital away from the city. At first it was sought to curb the recklessness of city councils in incurring lavish expenditures by giving the mayor a veto power. Laws were also pa.s.sed limiting the amount of debt which a city would be allowed to incur under any circ.u.mstances. Clothing the mayor with the veto power is now seen to have been a wise step; and arbitrary limitation of the amount of debt, though a clumsy expedient, is confessedly a necessary one. But beyond this, it was in some instances attempted to take the management of some departments of city business out of the hands of the city and put them into the hands of the state legislature. The most notable instance of this was in New York in 1857. The results, there and elsewhere, have been generally regarded as unsatisfactory. After a trial of thirty years the experience of New York has proved that a state legislature is not competent to take proper care of the government of cities. Its members do not know enough about the details of each locality, and consequently local affairs are left to the representatives from each locality, with "log-rolling" as the inevitable result. A man fresh from his farm on the edge of the Adirondacks knows nothing about the problems pertaining to electric wires in Broadway, or to rapid transit between Harlem and the Battery; and his consent to desired legislation on such points can very likely be obtained only by favouring some measure which he thinks will improve the value of his farm, or perhaps by helping him to debauch the civil service by getting some neighbour appointed to a position for which he is not qualified. All this is made worse by the fact that the members of a state government are generally less governed by a sense of responsibility toward the citizens of a particular city than even the worst local government that can be set up in such a city.[12]

[Footnote 1: It is not intended to deny that there may be instances in which the state government may advantageously partic.i.p.ate in the government of cities. It may be urged that, in the case of great cities, like New York or Boston, many people who are not residents either do business in the city or have vast business interests there, and thus may be as deeply interested in its welfare as any of the voters. It may also be said that state provisions for city government do not always work badly. There are many competent judges who approve of the appointment of police commissioners by the executive of Ma.s.sachusetts. There are generally two sides to a question; and to push a doctrine to extremes is to make oneself a _doctrinaire_ rather than a wise citizen. But experience clearly shows that in all doubtful cases it is safer to let the balance incline in favour of local self-government than the other way.]

Moreover, even if legislatures were otherwise competent to manage the local affairs of cities, they have not time enough, amid the pressure of other duties, to do justice to such matters. In 1870 the number of acts pa.s.sed by the New York legislature was 808. Of these, 212, or more than one fourth of the whole, related to cities and villages. The 808 acts, when printed, filled about 2,000 octavo pages; and of these the 212 acts filled more than 1,500 pages. This ill.u.s.trates what I said above about the vast quant.i.ty of details which have to be regulated in munic.i.p.al government. Here we have more than three fourths of the volume of state-legislation devoted to local affairs; and it hardly need be added that a great part of these enactments were worse than worthless because they were made hastily and without due consideration,--though not always, perhaps, without what lawyers call _a_ consideration.[13]

[Footnote 13: Nothing could be further from my thought than to cast any special imputation upon the New York legislature, which is probably a fair average specimen of law-making bodies. The theory of legislative bodies, as laid down in text-books, is that they are a.s.sembled for the purpose of enacting laws for the welfare of the community in general. In point of fact they seldom rise to such a lofty height of disinterestedness. Legislation is usually a mad scramble in which the final result, be it good or bad, gets evolved out of compromises and bargains among a swarm of clas.h.i.+ng local and personal interests.

The "consideration" may be anything from log-rolling to bribery. In American legislatures it is to be hoped that downright bribery is rare. As for log-rolling, or exchange of favours, there are many phases of it in which that which may be perfectly innocent shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into that which is unseemly or dishonourable or even criminal; and it is in this hazy region that Satan likes to set his traps for the unwary pilgrim.]

[Sidenote: Tweed Ring in New York.]

The experience of New York thus proved that state intervention and special legislation did not mend matters. It did not prevent the shameful rule of the Tweed Ring from 1868 to 1871, when a small band of conspirators got themselves elected or appointed to the princ.i.p.al city offices, and, having had their own corrupt creatures chosen judges of the city courts, proceeded to rob the taxpayers at their leisure. By the time they were discovered and brought to justice, their stealings amounted to many millions of dollars, and the rate of taxation had risen to more than two per cent.

[Sidenote: New experiments.]