CIVIC LEAGUE ARTICLE

The second article in the series published by the Intercollegiate Civic League is by W. H. Allen, author of "Efficient Democracy" and secretary of the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York City. The title is "Leadership by Intelligence." It is printed below:

The following American colleges and universities have contributed to the preparation of the present staff of the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York City: Amherst, Carleton, Chicago, Clark, Columbia, Cornell, DePauw, Harvard, Iowa, New York, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Smith, Tufts. Berlin, Halle, Leipsic and the Sorbonne have added touches here and there. Just what part did colleges have in fitting the college graduates on our staff for municipal research? During the college days, neither their instructors nor themselves had ever contemplated a work such as that in which they are now engaged. Some of them prepared for law, others for teaching, and one or two for accountancy. Yet today it is doubtful if one of them would exchange the problems with which he is now dealing for a more remunerative post as lawyer, teacher, or accountant.

The attraction offered by municipal research is due to the fact that it seems to promise a realization of the great American dream that usually grows dimmer and dimmer after college walls are left behind, viz: "Self-government for the benefit of all the governed." This dream will never come true simply because college men go into politics. Unless college training has radically changed within the last twelve months, it would be a civic tragedy to turn over the government of American cities to men chosen simply because they were college men. In talking to our professors, to our students, or to the outside world that is denied the monopoly we enjoy as college men, it may be excusable to keep up the tradition that there is some special merit in a bachelor's degree. But between ourselves in the Intercollegiate Civic League, what, pray, is there about our college training, our four years of fraternity life, athletics, and electives to enable us to guess within gun shot of the amount necessary to run a board of health: whether asphalt pavement is an inch or a foot thick; whether a tenement house department is spending too little or too much money; whether a city budget should be $143,000,000 or $100,000,000; or just where economy is possible?

The Bureau of Municipal Reform believes that one reason why so few college men go into politics and the chief reason why the college man in politics has so often compromised with corruption when he started out to annihilate it, is that the college man has failed to see that the particular kind of intelligence that is needed in government is not intelligence about Rameses, Hobbs, Aristotle, Napoleon, H2O, spherical trig or English Lit.

In municipal government, as in football, the rule of the game should be: Watch the ball. This is the one thing that has not hitherto been done. It is the thing that is not generally contemplated when college men are urged to go into politics, but just as sure as watching the quarterback or left end will lose the football championship, so watching the mayor or comptroller or alderman will continue the evils of American municipal government. Just as in football, too, the test of the player is what he is able to do with the ball and with his team, so the test of the college man in politics is the extent to which he can advance the interests of his constituents; their interests, like the ball, are objective, countable, visible, watchable things, not birthmarks or character.

Last year President Roosevelt urged the members of the Intercollegiate Civic League to take an intelligent, disinterested and practical part in the everyday duties of the average citizen. At present it is impossible for intelligent men to take an intelligent part in the duties of citizenship, because city records are so kept that they either tell falsehoods or only a small part of the truth necessary to intelligent judgment. If the presidents of the colleges above mentioned were to be sent to Boston to serve as the small commission which President Eliot urges to reform municipal government in the United States, they could not possibly be intelligent about the needs of Boston or do the intelligent thing for Boston without first insuring records that will describe work done when done and account for money spent when spent in such a way that the average citizen of Boston would understand what he was getting for his money and what was not being done that he wanted done.

It is with government as with morals, the intelligence that does us the most good is not the intelligence that we ourselves possess about ourselves, but the intelligence that others possess about us. You and I are, of course, good in spots because of what we know, but we are also good, oftentimes, because other people know exactly what we are doing. Intelligence is most useful to the governed when it is in their possession to tell them what governing officials are about.

Self-government for the benefit of all the governed will be an idle dream until inside information about the facts of the government becomes possible. Monopoly of information must precede monopoly of franchise. When all men are looking, corrupt politicians walk quite as straight a line as college presidents. As the Independent said recently, in urging a permanent endowment for the Bureau of Municipal Research, "Attempts at reform have failed in New York and elsewhere because the Republican and Democratic Tammany Halls of our cities have had inside information and have been able to make black look white because the general public was not informed. Reform is discredited in American cities because its devotees have informed neither themselves nor the public as to the essential facts of community needs and government results. Checks and panaceas of every description have been tried--everything but a constant light; everything but consecutive, cumulative publicity of essential facts. . . . No corrupt or incompetent official will put poison in a baby's milk, pile garbage on his neighbor's doorstep, put his hands in his neighbor's pocket, when his neighbor is looking."

The Bureau of Municipal Research aims so to mass the facts of government as to produce artificially the light and the neighbor's eye which will inhibit the desire to misgovern. For the execution of this program, college men are needed. When they do not sincerely love to be intelligent, they at least like to seem to be intelligent. I can conceive of no greater service that can be rendered by the Intercollegiate Civic League than to spread among its membership the idea that no intelligence is negotiable in matters politic but intelligence as to government ends and community needs. When college men once have this feeling, their pride as citizens and as men of general intelligence will lead them to ask questions and to head movements necessary to secure efficiency in the government of American cities.

The Bureau of Municipal Research will be pleased to send further information to any students interested in its successful attempts to secure uniform accounting for the municipal departments, budget estimates based upon a clear statement of department needs, the proposed reorganization of the central auditing and examining of New York City, and methods of arriving at necessary charter changes