MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

During the fall and winter of the current academic year President Eliot has spoken before economic and citizens' clubs in various cities of Massachusetts on "Municipal Government by Commission." Among others he has filled the following engagements: October 25, Salem Board of Trade, Salem; October 31, Economic Club, Worcester; November 13, Men's Club of Portland Street Baptist Church, Haverhill; December 2, Economic Club, Springfield; December 10, Lowell Board of Trade, Lowell; January 30, Citizens' Association of Quincy; February 5, Lynn Twentieth Century Club, Lynn; and February 27, Parish Club, Cambridge. He also addressed the members of the Harvard Union on the same subject on November 18.

As yet President Eliot has confined himself to single speeches on the subject, but as Godkin Lecturer for the current year, an appointment recently given him by the Corporation, he will probably develop the subject of "Municipal Government by Commission" more fully and present it in a series of addresses. The Godkin Lectureship was established in 1903 from a fund contributed mainly in small amounts from many sources as a memorial to Edwin Laurence Godkin, for a long time editor of the "Nation" and the "New York Post." Lectures on this foundation are to treat "The Essentials of Free Government and the Duties of the Citizen," or some similar subject. President Eliot is the second incumbent of the lectureship. The first was the Right Honorable James Bryce, British Ambassador to the United States, who, in the fall of 1904, delivered a series of five lectures on "The Study of Popular Government." The lectures this year will probably be given in May.

The best available account of the ideas that President Eliot has embodied in his addresses may be found in an article written by him for "The World's Work" of October, 1907. The first part of the article is devoted to an examination of the nature and origin of the governmental evils of our cities, while the second part proposes methods of reorganization and reform based on several concrete examples.

President Eliot assigns seven particular causes for the failure of municipal government in the United States. In the first place, "the original structure of the city government was ill suited to the work to be done; and municipal work has so changed since the American city government was constructed that a form of government, originally founded on a false analogy, has become less and less adapted to present functions." "Secondly," says President Eliot, "city business being now much more elaborate, extensive, and complicated than it was originally, inexperienced, frequently changing executive bodies, such as subcommittees of city legislative bodies, have become worse than useless; because the real business can only be done by experts." "Thirdly, the old idea of local representation and local government is inapplicable to modern cities."

The fourth cause that he assigns for failure is that "the city taxpayers have lost control over the expenditures of the tax money they have paid in." "Fifthly, the unit of area for taxation is so defined geographically that a just system of taxation has in many cases become impossible, and great wastes in the various branches of the city administration are inevitable." One of the most important causes is that "the practices of corporations that need public franchises have been often corrupt." And finally, "legislative remedies for these evils have been hindered by a false theory that a city ought to be an independent entity managing all its own affairs, and accepting neither aid nor control from the state."

Confronted by these evils and their causes, President Eliot next proceeds to point out a way of obviating them. He shows how Boston has met some of the problems by placing her parks, her water supply, her library, city hospital, and fire department in the hands of commissions, thus relieving the mayor, aldermen, and council, of a large amount of municipal business. In Galveston, Texas, the mayor, aldermen, and council are entirely replaced by a single body whose functions are wholly administrative. There are five men elected by the people, each with a department of the city's business under his supervision. Under these commissioners the proper experts are employed and principles of business are followed. Another illustration of the working of government by commission is in the city of Washington, D. C., where a commission appointed by Congress governs the city.

President Eliot believes that the number of commissioners should be kept small, never exceeding seven. To the objection that a small commission is undemocratic, he replies that the charter constituting it proceeds from the people and that the renewing of the commission is in the hands of the people by means of election. But there are other guarantees of democracy; the initiative and referendum, the daily and weekly press, and the method of public hearing.

Above all else, President Eliot urges a