The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-11-09
0MMISSI0N SYSTEM.
Eureka, Utah.

Now that the election is over and all the great
questions, the mOmentous problems, of the NUM-
cipaty have been settled by sovereign people, it
is unfair to the successful candidates to expect too
much practical good to result from their election.
There too many fossilized forms which must
be observed too many legal technicalities to
form with, too much inane red tape in the cumber-
some machinery of the city government to permit
the duly elected and constituted servants of the
people to do things in an economical and efficient
way. No doubt the chosen representatives of the
people want to give the city the best administra-
ton it ever had In this desire there is nothing
not worthy of commentator. But when the new
officials inaugurated and begin the work in
trusted to their care, they will find a system of
checks intended to prevent bad and inefficient SER
wants from doing bad things quite as effective in
tying their hands in their laudabe endeavors to
the people we'll They will find, too, that
here and there workers who under our present
political system not only demand, but are entitled
to jobs of various sorts. Faithful work before the
election is entitled to recognition when the plums
distributed. The duly constituted representa-
tives of the people will discover that they are
powerless to promote the welfare of the city with
out the concurrence of some half-dozen or more
other men. Being powerless, it is natural to as
sociate with their lack of power an even greater
lack of definite responsibility. So the work of
the city will be hndered and nothing will be done,
the authority of doing which is definitely fixed
great deal of complaint was made during the
campaign of extravaganza in the administration
of public affairs. Whether the complaint was we'll
founded not, it is noteworthy that no one man
was singled out as a wrongdoer. 1t was only the
administration, very indefinite thing indeed when
considered without partisan or religious bias, and
judged without the political color which developed
in the heat of the campaign. If the administration
did things it was extravagant and reckless accord
ing to its opponents if it didn't the responsibility
for its inacton was shifted to the ntrcacies of the
law governing the matter, according to It's votares
The whole system is complicated, and the complica-
tions make it inefficient. 1t is a relic, modified
somewhat, of the old kings and lords and COM
mons system, outgrown, and the victim of political
machinery which makes clean and efficient govern
ment all but impossible
In marked contrast to local conditions, higher
assessments higher tax rates, and withal less mon
ey in the treasury, the situation presented by
those more fortunate cities which have dumped
the whole wornout system into the limbo of dead
things and substituted therefor the commission |
system, variously known the Galveston idea or
Houston idea, or whatever town has sdopted it.
The advocates of commission government do not
claim perfection for the system 1t is only an i'm
In operation defects are disclosed, |
weak places made manifest, but these, even if ex-
perience cannot show the method of complete Grad
ication, compensated for by the capable admin
istration which has resulted Born of necessity in
the dire disaster which befell Galveston the peo-
pie were quick to recognize that if new methods
were required to cope with new and unusual con-
ditions, old methods certainly the best to
cope with usual conditions. If it is an i'll wind