The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1909-05-11
REFORM IS
PRACTICABLE
SENSE Is THE CHIEF
REQUIREMENT, DECLARES
WORKER.

Taking a common sense view of
things, Horace e. Deming, chairman
of the National Municipal leagues
executive committee, declares that
the problem of municipal government
| is one of the simplest of solution. In
| the recent yearly meeting of the
league, of which Mr.. Deming was one
of the founders, the executive COM
mittee's chairman discussed "Some
Causes of Bad City Government and
Their Remedies and, in the course
| of discussion, he said:
When the National Municipal
league began its inquiry into this sub
| ject it conducted an investigation at
first hand in all the leading cities of
| this country. 1t picked out well-in
| formed persons living in those cities
and asked them to make reports up
on certain phases. These were put
! together and arranged in comparable
!
clearly that it was amazing to find
! that the fundamental causes of bal
government We're the same every
where.
There is nothing peculiar about
the main causes of our municipal all
ments. They are absolutely plain
and simple, and SO are the remedies.
The first cause of the misrule of our
cities is that they are governed not
| by the people of the city, but by out
siders, and that the policy according
| to which the public affairs of city
are conducted is not determined by
and suited to the needs of the people
of the city. but it is everywhere de-
termined by the selfish interest of
these outsiders.
"The second cause is that nine
eminent are absorbed in business
transactions: that common sense
principles universally accepted as es
sential to the successful conduct of
business enterprises demand that the
persons intrusted with such trans
actions should be selected solely with
reference to their honesty, ability
and industry, and to their fidelity to
the interests of the business. Yet,
virtually in every city in the United
States, they are neither selected nor
retained for any such reasons, but
because they are useful to the per-
sons who happen to control and can
exploit the city's resources.
"A third fundamental cause of our
municipal ailments is that the finan-
cial methods and accounts of our
cities are haphazard and crude. They
are both uninforming and misinform-
ing. The document of city control
Ter, instead of being a document of
light and leading, is an example of
darkness and misleading.
There is no mystery about either
the causes or their evil results and
when I hear grandiloquent talk about
the wonderful compleXity of city
government and that a city must be
expected to conduct the public bust
ness inefficently and that great
! deal of Incidental corruption is to be
taken for granted, I wonder how
| long level headed business men would
listen with patience to talk of that
kind as satisfactory explanation of
A like situation in mill or a fac
tory.
1T is not at all necessary to fly
off into the air in order to do reform
work. Quite the contrary, it is very
steadying to keep your feet on the
ground regardless of how loud you
are shouting or how vigorously you
tare waving the American flag; and if
the ground happens to be a city pave
ment, let us have the pavement a
clean one. In other words, the bust
ness part of city government. and
that is nine-tenths of it, must be con-
Quoted upon the plane of sound or
binary common sense business prin-
ciples. And why shouldn't We put it
there"