LAST GODKIN LECTURE

The last of the four Godkin lectures on "Municipal Government" was delivered by President Eliot in the Lecture Room of the Fogg Art Museum last Saturday evening. The special phase of the subject considered was, "The Promising Future of Municipal Reform."

The experiments in reform that have been already tried clearly show the superiority of one board, elected at large, and restrained in the exercise of its powers by publicity, state supervision, and popular control. The experiment of one board has been successful wherever it has been tried. A small board, moreover, is to be preferred to a large board, as it is possible for the community to choose five men intelligently, while a wise selection is difficult when there are seventy-five men to be elected, as in the case of the city councils of the present day.

Election at large is desirable, since election by wards means of necessity election on questions of local policy, while the chief needs and interests of the modern city are not local in any sense. Election by wards results in corruption, the obstructing of public business, and the obscuring of responsibility, a very serious defect in any government.

Greater publicity would go far toward securing less corruption in our city governments. Not only should the meetings of the board be open to the public, but the proceedings and the auditing accounts should also be published at short intervals.

To overcome the unwillingness of men on ability to enter the public service is one of the most pressing problems of municipal reform. Efficient Americans see in the service of corporations an opportunity to rise, while they see in municipal government only a machine that has long since been proved to be absolutely useless. To obtain better machinery in municipal government, then, is an object to be desired. This end would be furthered by an increase in state supervision over and in popular control of our city governments. State supervision has enormously increased in recent years, practically all the taxing powers of the city having been taken away, and lodged in the hands of the state legislature. This tendency is to be encouraged, since the interests of cities are now so far-reaching that they can be protected only by the state, as those of the state are guarded by the nation.

In advocating an increase of popular control, we are confronted by the arguments of those who say that universal suffrage is to blame for the great evils in municipal government, in that men have viewed their development with composure and indifference. To this it may be answered that experiments in municipal reform in Massachusetts, Texas and lowa have shown that universal suffrage may choose men of both honesty and ability. There has never been a case of corruption in all the school boards that have been elected by universal suffrage. The working classes do not at present realize the evils existing in American city government; but when this appreciation is brought home to them, they will undoubtedly be on the side of the right. The question at present is, Should not universal suffrage be given a fair chance to show that with efficient machinery it can establish a city government that will be at once efficient and pure?