SECOND ROUND

After a narrow defeat in 1938, Plan E has wrangled its way back on the ballot. The battle was lost two years ago in a barrage of personal bickerings and town-gown flare-ups that all but overshadowed the issue in dispute. This time the question is put more soberly before the electorate: does Cambridge stand to gain from a professional city government in which political play is kept at an absolute minimum?

Plan E is a streamlined bit of government, a comparatively recent child of political science. For the mayor-boss it substitutes a trained, salaried executive, the city manager, who operates in a strictly non-political sphere. He is solely responsible to the city council, whose members are elected by the community at large. Thus the cell of bossism, the ward, is smashed; and all the petty strings pulled by ward politicians are tied into a strong web around the city council. Further, the dictatorship of the 51 per cent is supplanted by a system of proportional representation, under which each party receives a number of representatives proportional to its votes. Thus a maximum of efficiency in the executive and a maximum of democracy in the legislature are attained.

Like any other political blueprint, Plan E functions more smoothly on paper than in practice. Cleveland returned to the mayoralty system after the city manager's cabinet was found to have passed back into the control of the bosses. The destruction of the ward and its intimate relationships tends to breed indifference in the voters and encourages group interests to put up candidates of their own. These difficulties have to be reckoned with; but how they will lead to "dictatorial gangster-rule," only the vision of a Mike Sullivan can perceive.

Plan E is an innovation worth crusading for, but it can never be a panacea for the evils of city government. Any system can be abused by those in control; in the end an alert electorate is the only safeguard of reform. If Plan E carries the election next wek, its supporters cannot afford to lay down their arms. Only then will the fight begin in earnest.