GOOD GOVERNMENT LEAGUE.

The annual meeting of the Good Government League of Cambridge was held in Sanders Theatre last night. Mr. Henry N. Wheeler '71, President of the League, was the presiding officer.

President Eliot, who spoke on "The Organization of the Public School System in a City of 100,000 People," said in part:

The Department of Education in a municipality is of more importance than all the other departments put together, not from the point of view of amount of expenditures, to be sure, but because the quality of the population in the ensuing generations is determined most of all by the work and efficiency of this department.

The school organization in American cities has always been the least effective, and there are two points in which an improvement may be sought: first, the number of members on the school committee is too large, and second, expenditures for educational purposes should be a definite per cent of the total valuation of the city.

The school committee should have no more than ten members; preferably less than that number. Such a small board would be an efficient and compact body, with a sufficient variety of opinion, with added effectiveness for executive work and the working out of sound policies. The schools should not be representative of sectional interests, but should have as their unit, areas larger than Cambridge or than Boston, such as the metropolitan district, which forms a unit for the park and sewerage system, and should be unified for other purposes. The members of the board should be experts, as is the case in St. Louis, where the board includes the superintendents of instruction, buildings and supplies. They should be appointed and not elected, and should be men already successful in their vocation before being called into public service.

Mr. Edmund Reardon made a few remarks on the work of the League's executive committee, and Mr. Richard H. Dana '74, spoke on the desirability and the possibility of extending the merit system.

Mayor A. J. Daly then welcomed and introduced the Hon. R. Fulton Cutting, President of the Citizens' Union of New York. Mr. Cutting spoke briefly of the conditions, social and political, to be found in New York, of the work in municipal affairs that is being pursued there, and of the work yet to be done. New York may be said to be representative of the eastern section of the country and thus carries a great responsibility. Mr. Cutting then spoke of municipalities in Great Britain, and indicated the effect of the adoption in this country of the system in use there.