The Boise citizen. (Boise, Idaho) 1906-1910, 1907-02-22
GOOD CITY
GOVERNMENT
Cleveland Has Relegated Politics
and Now Has Model City
Administration

going well so long as his party wins, will
sneer in reply that they can get the
votes, and so they can; but that is be-
cause the people of Cleveland have
learned that, in voting for these men,
they are voting not for street-car com
panies or other public utility corpora
tions and special privileges, not for the
few rich these support in luxurious idle
ness, but for themselves.
The visitor will meet, in these officials,
a coterie of interesting personalities,
strongly differentiated, and yet working
with common aim, and that aim to
realize democracy in their city. They
are just men, of course, very human
men, who make mistakes and ali that,
but men who are saved from their mis-
takes by an integrity of purpose-that
is, they are men with ideals and aspira-
tions.
There, for instance, is Peter Witt, the
working-man in politics, the radical, erst-
while blacklisted mechanic, who has
been on strike and gone hungry because
he believd in principle; he is the city
clerk, and yet he is more than that: he
is a student of economics, albeit with
nothing of the doctrinaire, nothing of
the academician about him; he is a
speaker of striking originality, a kind of
agitator, who believes in what the So
cialists-who have name for every
thing "the propaganda of the
shock" He understands taxation and
revenue; for months he conducted a tax
school in the city hall and instructed
thousands of citizens in that most i'm
portant and least understood function of
government-the raising of revenue
THE SORT OF MEN WHO RUN
THE CITY.
Then there are the three directors of
public service, headed by William J.
Springborn, the business man in poll
tics, but with this difference and nov
city, that he regards and looks after
the citys business, instead of his own;
in which respect he is unlike the bust
ness men who have too long been in
politics, constructing machines, debauch-
ing councils and legislatures. Mr..
Springborn has charge of the cleaning,
paving and lighting of the streets, and,
in word, of all those municipal activ
tiles known as public works. One Of
Mr.. Springborn's colleagues on the
board of public service is the Rev. Har-
ris R. Cooley, and the other is David
E. Leslie. These, too, have their depart
ments, for, in Cleveland, the board of
public service does not sit daily as a
board; the directors distribute the pub
lie work, accomplishing what the Ohio
code should accomplish but,
one is tempted to say, purposely tried
to prevent-that is, efficiency and mu-
nicipal progress.
Each of the three directors of public
service is an expert in his own depart
ment. Mr.. Leslie has charge of the
parks, and under his regime they have
ceased to be maintained at public ex-
pense for the exclusive use of the rich,
a place where they may drive in victorias
Or speed in automobiles; instead they
have become parks for the people, with
no forbidding signs, Keep OFF the
Grass" but with tennis courts, golf links,
baseball grounds, swimming pools, com
tort stations, Fairgrounds and all that
inc stars we have"
Mr.. Cooley is the preacher in politics;