The Press

The non-partisan group of Cambridge citizens who in 1938 almost persuaded a majority of their fellow-citizens to adopt the Plan E form of city government are off to a good start in their 1940 campaign. Volunteer workers, mostly women, have obtained 9000 signatures for their petition, many more than are needed to put the question on the ballot in November.

Plan E is essentially the form of government which has given Cincinnati the reputation of being the best managed city in the country. It provides, in brief, for a city council of nine, to be elected by proportional representation. The council would elect one of its members mayor. He would be the official head of the city. In addition it would appoint a city manager, who, as administrative chief of the city, would carry out the council's policies and be responsible to it. Thus responsibility for city affairs would be concentrated in the council, which, elected by P. R., would be truly representative of the city's population.

Opponents of the plan will undoubtedly attack it as being inspired by Harvard professors, Communists, Nazis, and probably even by Bertrand Russell. But the fact is that it is simply an American scheme, worked out by practical Americans, for the solution of an old American problem-inefficient municipal government. The Boston Herald.