The record-union., 1891-11-03

latter cases, the evil is due wholly to the
vicious domination of party politics in
a domain where they should be wholly
eschewed. And this reason applies
largely in accounting for misgovernment,
due to the failure to select experts, or at
least those having knowledge of the adj
vances made in science in the matters
pertaining to the management of cities.
How, asks Eliot, are we to have expert
city government, without employing ex-
perts? His question answers itself-un
til cities select administrators of their af-
fairs as the business man selects the heads
OF departments in his concern, we cannot
have thoroughly good city government
in America. But such selection will
never be made, so long as to party poll
tics we commit the choosing. With party
and party managers, the dispensation of
patronage and the control of party tenure
are infinitely more important than is eff
cient municipal management. Perma-
nent tenures to skilled men in depart
ments of city government demanding
their trained efficiency cannot be guaran-
teed under party management, and hence
the best men will not assume the po-
sitions where their skill and knowledge
could most serve their fellow citizens.
Professor Eliot favors giving the
Mayors greater powers, holding them to
very much broader responsibility, and
giving them the appointing power and
the power of removal from positions for
cause, where trained skill is demanded.
Unless the tenure of the Mayor is itself
greatly extended, however, this remedy
is of little value he rightly concludes, and
unless the experts, once in place, can be
guaranteed it during competency and
faithfulness. But the disposition is not
to make the Mayors Office life term,
nor is it clear that it should be, nor yet
to enlargement of its powers and re-
sponsibilities. Since, then, city can
not compete with private business for
the services of the skilled, except it offers
equally as good terms, the conclusion
is reached that in all reform efforts under
democratic government, as under aristo-
cratic and autocratic governments, hon.
est, highly trained, well paid permanent
officials must be aimed at and secured,
and the methods of conducting munich
pal affairs must be assimilated to the
methods of the great private and corpo-
rate concerns which require intelligence,
high training and long experience.
81 But in this conclusion Professor Eliot
has advanced nothing new; his method
of reaching it is novel, and perhaps it has
not before been so well put, that lack of
scientific knowledge has a great deal to
do with bad city government. After all
the whole thing comes down to the prop
osition the RECoRD-UNIoN advanced
years ago, and to which it still adheres,
that divorcement of municipal govern
ment from party politics is the true rem
edy for all the ills of uneconomic and un-
scientific city government. Accomplish
that and all the rest that is desirable will
follow in its train. How is this to be
done? By education OF the public intel
igence to such plane that of it will be
born the courage to dismiss party from
city concerns. The people of our Ameri-
can cities have been advanced to a mum
Der of reforms by persistent presentation
of their virtues, and they will be, in time,
brought level with this other.