Part 15 (1/2)
14. What abuses crept into the government of many of the English cities?
15. What was the Puritan att.i.tude towards such abuses?
16. Give an account of the government of New York city:--
a. The charter of 1686.
b. The governing corporation.
c. The public land.
d. The city's privileges as a county.
e. Officers by election and by appointment.
f. Judicial functions.
g. Martial law.
h. The charter of 1821.
17. Give an account of the government of Philadelphia:--
a. The governments after which it was patterned.
b. The viciousness of the system adopted.
c. The legislative interference that was thus provoked.
d. The division of responsibility and the results of such division.
e. The nature of the changes made in 1789.
18. Why are the traditions of good government lacking in the older American cities?
Section 3. The Government of Cities in the United States.
[Sidenote: Several features of our city governments.]
At the present day American munic.i.p.al governments are for the most part constructed on the same general plan, though with many variations in detail. There is an executive department, with the mayor at its head. The mayor is elected voters of the city, and holds office generally for one year, but sometimes for two or three years, and in St. Louis and Philadelphia even for four years. Under the mayor are various heads of departments,--street commissioners, a.s.sessors, overseers of the poor, etc.,--sometimes elected by the citizens, sometimes appointed by the mayor or the city council. This city council Is a legislative body, usually consisting of two chambers, the aldermen and the common council, elected by the citizens; but in many small cities, and a few of the largest,--such as New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco,--there is but one such chamber. Then there are city judges, sometimes appointed by the governor of the state, to serve for life or during good behaviour, but usually elected by the citizens for short terms.
All appropriations of money for city purposes are made by the city council; and as a general rule this council has some control over the heads of executive departments, which it exercises through committees.
Thus there may be a committee upon streets, upon public buildings, upon parks or almshouses or whatever the munic.i.p.al government is concerned with. The head of a department is more or less dependent upon his committee, and in practice this is found to divide and weaken responsibility. The heads of departments are apt to be independent of one another, and to owe no allegiance in common to any one. The mayor, when he appoints them, usually does so subject to the approval, of the city council or of one branch of it. The mayor is usually not a member of the city council, but can veto its enactments, which however can be pa.s.sed over his veto by a two thirds majority.
[Sidenote: They do not seem to work well.]
[Sidenote: some difficulties to be stated.]
City governments thus const.i.tuted are something like state governments in miniature. The relation of the mayor to the city council is somewhat like that of the governor to the state legislature, and of the president to the national congress. In theory nothing could well be more republican, or more unlike such city governments as those of New York and Philadelphia before the Revolution. Yet in practice it does not seem to work well. New York and Philadelphia seem to have heard as many complaints in the nineteenth century as in the eighteenth, and the same kind of complaints,--of excessive taxation, public money wasted or embezzled, ill-paved and dirty streets, inefficient police, and so on to the end of the chapter. In most of our large cities similar evils have been witnessed, and in too many of the smaller ones the trouble seems to be the same in kind, only less in degree. Our republican government, which, after making all due allowances, seems to work remarkably well in rural districts, and in the states, and in the nation, has certainly been far less successful as applied to cities. Accordingly our cities have come to furnish topics for reflection to which writers and orators fond of boasting the unapproachable excellence of American inst.i.tutions do not like to allude. Fifty years ago we were wont to speak of civil government in the United States as if it had dropped from heaven or had been specially created by some kind of miracle upon American soil; and we were apt to think that in mere republican forms there was some kind of mystic virtue which made them a panacea for all political evils. Our later experience with cities has rudely disturbed this too confident frame of mind. It has furnished facts which do not seem to fit our self-complacent theory, so that now our writers and speakers are inclined to vent their spleen upon the unhappy cities, perhaps too unreservedly. We hear them called ”foul sinks of corruption” and ”plague spots on our body politic.” Yet in all probability our cities are destined to increase in number and to grow larger and larger; so that perhaps it is just as well to consider them calmly, as presenting problems which had not been thought of when our general theory of government was first worked out a hundred years ago, but which, after we have been sufficiently taught by experience, we may hope to succeed in solving, just as we have heretofore succeeded in other things. A general discussion of the subject does not fall within the province of this brief historical sketch. But our account would be very incomplete if we were to stop short of mentioning some of the recent attempts that have been made toward reconstructing our theories of city government and improving its practical working. And first, let us point out a few of the peculiar difficulties of the problem, that we may see why we might have been expected, up to the present time, to have been less successful in managing our great cities than in managing our rural communities, and our states, and our nation.
[Sidenote: Rapid growth of American cities.]
In the first place, the problem is comparatively new and has taken us unawares. At the time of Was.h.i.+ngton's inauguration to the presidency there were no large cities in the United States. Philadelphia had a population of 42,000; New York had 33,000; Boston, which came next, with 18,000, was not yet a city. Then came Baltimore, with 13,000; while Brooklyn was a village of 1,600 souls. Now these five cities have a population of more than 4,000,000, or more than that of the United States in 1789. And consider how rapidly new cities have been added to the list. One hardly needs to mention the most striking cases, such as Chicago, with 4,000 inhabitants in 1840. and at least 1,000,000 in 1890; or Denver, with its miles of handsome streets and shops, and not one native inhabitant who has reached his thirtieth birthday. Such facts are summed up in the general statement that, whereas in 1790 the population of the United States was scarcely 4,000,000, and out of each 100 inhabitants only 3 dwelt in cities and the other 97 in rural places; on the other hand in 1880, when the population was more than 50,000,000, out of each 100 inhabitants 23 dwelt in cities and 77 in rural places.
But duly to appreciate the rapidity of this growth of cities, we must observe that most of it has been subsequent to 1840. In 1790 there were six towns in the United States that might be ranked as cities from their size, though to get this number we must include Boston. In 1800 the number was the same. By 1810 the number had risen from 6 to 11; by 1820 it had reached 13; by 1830 this thirteen had doubled and become 26; and in 1840 there were 44 cities altogether. The urban population increased from 210,873 in 1800 to 1,453,994 in 1840. But between 1840 and 1880 the number of new cities which came into existence was 242, and the urban population increased to 11,318,547. Nothing like this was ever known before in any part of the world, and perhaps it is not strange that such a tremendous development did not find our methods of government fully prepared to deal with it.
[Sidenote: Want of practical foresight.]
This rapidity of growth has entailed some important consequences. In the first place it obliges the city to make great outlays of money in order to get immediate results. Public works must be undertaken with a view to quickness rather than thoroughness. Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be done over again. Such conditions of imperative haste increase the temptations to dishonesty as well as the liability to errors of judgment on the part of the men who administer the public funds.[10] Then the rapid growth of a city, especially of a new city, requiring the immediate construction of a certain amount of public works, almost necessitates the borrowing of money, and debt means heavy taxes. It is like the case of a young man who, in order to secure a home for his quickly growing family, buys a house under a heavy mortgage. Twice a year there comes in a great bill for interest, and in order to meet it he must economize in his table or now and then deny himself a new suit of clothes. So if a city has to tax heavily to pay its debts, it must cut down its current expenses somewhere, and the results are sure to be visible in more or less untidiness and inefficiency. Mr. Low tells us that ”very few of our American cities have yet paid in full the cost of their original water-works.” Lastly, much wastefulness results from want of foresight. It is not easy to predict how a city will grow, or the nature of its needs a few years hence. Moreover, even when it is easy enough to predict a result, it is not easy to secure practical foresight on the part of a city council elected for the current year. Its members are afraid of making taxes too heavy this year, and considerations of ten years hence are apt to be dismissed as ”visionary.” It is always hard for us to realize how terribly soon ten years hence will be here.
The habit of doing things by halves has been often commented on (and, perhaps, even more by our own writers than by foreigners) as especially noticeable in America. It has doubtless been fostered by the conditions which in so many cases have made it absolutely necessary to adopt temporary makes.h.i.+fts. These conditions have produced a certain habit of mind.
[Footnote 10: This and some of the following considerations have been ably set forth and ill.u.s.trated by Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia College, and lately mayor of Brooklyn, in an address at Johns Hopkins University, published in _J. H. U. Studies, Supplementary Notes_, no. 4.]
[Sidenote: Growth in complexity of government in cities.]