The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-17
RULING 4 crTF.

 organization, they should welcome glad ly all the information at hand, which tends to shed light upon the possibili- ties of success. As we have pointed out upon another occasion, the proposed charter for the proposed city of Orange which has received the approval of the general assembly, is exactly the kind of instrument which is sure to vex, dis appoint and discourage, and finally be abandoned for a simpler and more con vlncing form of self rule,
 The city of San Francisco provided itself several years ago with the then most approved municipal form of gov ernment. There were executive officers. a legislative body and boards of admin
 straton. In the attempt of that city to rise from it's own ashes, it is being clearly demonstrated what hollow mockery that government has been, since the moment cunning politicians got hold of 1t and changed 1t into a machine. The mayor is in confinement under indictment for having debauch- ed his office. Public service corporation officials are under indictment for having bribed the city fathers. Not a depart ment of the local government appears to have escaped the whitening and blighting effects of graft. Corrupt and contented," the City of San Fran cisco has until now gone on its way without protest from those, whose first business should have been the protec- tion of their city against the political .seoundrels in command of 1t. The awakening has come, and 1t Is serious ly proposed by representative citizens and efficiency where chaos and graft existed, to expend annually s100,000 Ito watch public officials and keep the city administration honest" In other words, the San Francisco of to-day, like the San Francisco of '49, falls back upon the principle of government which has it's roots in a vigilance committee Is this situation likely to appeal, in be- half of the conventional city charter, to the modern makers of city? Is its lesson not to be taken to heart by them, even though they feel themselves equal to any emergency which may arise as the city makers of the town of Orange are said to feel?
 The residents of the city of Des Moines in distant Iowa, tired and dis gusted with the conventional city which mistaken judgment has builded every where throughout this country, will within a few days vote whether to adopt or reject a substitute plan for the government of that community. It's advocates are enthusiastic in their be- lief that they have found the solution of the municipal problem, and are con- fldent that they have materially im- proved upon the Galveston commission plan of government, which is an indig- nant abandonment of the kind of local government the town of Orange Is about to consider sympathetieaily. Tn a few words, the Des Moines scheme is a government of five men who shall have absolute control of the entire gov ernment of the city and be responsible for it. They can make laws and un- make them, and in other ways exercise the power and authority which charac- terize the government of the beautiful city of Washington in the District of Columbia by commission. To offset the danger of new machine taking the place of the old, and more easily per petuating itself in power, the principle of the recall which has been so suc- cessful in Los Angeles, California, is in- troduced. If the people find themselves misled, they can vote by clear ma jority the offending officials out of of- flee, Twenty-Five per cent of the vot- CTS may set the removal machinery ln- to operation. Any twenty-five voters may nominate a man for one of the offices, though the ten candidates re- ceiving the highest nominating vote are the only ones to be finally voted upon There are other protective and restric- tive provisions in the act, but as they are merely incidental to the main pur- pose of simplifying and strengthening local government it is unnecessary to mention them.
 In fact the only object we have in calling attention to the situation in -saE Francisco and to that in Des Moines, and the reliance those cities have upon the Texas experiment, is to point out, before additional Connecticut towns are brought under the demoral- izing influence of the conventional city charter, the possibility of moving more slowly and more intelligently. Wholly aside from the fact that 1t may be bet ter for the people of the town of