Perth Amboy evening news., 1911-08-04
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

5ONVA hAAAEht u NAsASS SH
Eleven years ago a horror. that
no living man could regard as a dis
guised national blessing. befell an
American city. After the sea in ris-
en- might had made manifest the pet
tiness of all human power Galveston
was left a death-flled waste seeming
ly to be thenceforth only an awful
memory like to the cities of the Pal
estine plain.
There was a likeness beside that
| Of the destruction. For Galveston
had been an example of civic mi
! guilty, though no worse than the ma
jority of American municipalities. 1t
was a ring-ruled city. 1t was a city
of graft. 1t was a city of private Ii
cense of vice and crime by it's polit-
ical rulers. 1t was a misruled, in
solvent, unsafe city. 1t was a city
without credit and it could pay even
the teachers of it's children only with
scrip worth so cents on the dollar.
But there was an essential differ
ence between Galveston and the his
toric cities that died in a night. The
men who saw dawn break upon that
scene of utter destruction on the gulf
coast we're rue Americans-over pa
tient with misrule, too long Cynic-
ally tolerant of ~entrenched injustice,
but in the crucial hour, ready to
turn a keen. %untroubled face home
to the instant need of things"
Nobody had planned, nobody
could have planned, what they did.
They simply saw that chaos would
remain chaos unless there were wip-
ing out of the corrupt and inCompe-
tent municipal system as clearly
complete as the sweep of the tidal
wave over their city's sea front.
Without precedent and without
sanction of any law save the public
need. the public good and the public
will, the stricken city calmly oblit-
Grated it's established institutions
and placed it's affairs, with absolute
powers, in the hands of citizens in
whom the people had faith-two
named by a gathering of wholly I'M
authorized citizens and three named
by the governor of the state.
Thus was born Tor cities in the
form OF gov It was regarded by its
OnI'S2Ts as merely a temporary de-
vice in an hour when a weaker peo-
pie would have despatred and fed for
all times from a hopeless task of re
pair. There was no thought OF max
s. J. G. Alb
eICcritN'
But the plan worked amazingly.
And as Galveston grew, in strength
and size, and financial power hither-
TO unknown, in pace with the up
building of its wonderful sea-wall,
they saw hat the secret lay in hat
stop gap commission, unconstitution-
al because appointive. So they made
their experiment permanent and con-
stitutional and gave to their country
the first workable reply to James
Bryce's accurate and deserved indict-
ment in his American Common
wealth.
There is no denying that the
government of cities is the one con-
spicuous failure of the United States.
The deficiencies of the national gov
eminent tell but little for evil on
the welfare of the people. The faults
of the state governments are insig-
nifcant compared with the e%xtrava-
| gance, corruption and mismanage-
ment which mark the administration
of most Of the cities
THAT emergency measure and its
prompt consequences were a marvel
Gus object lesson to the entire ma
| ton. Today that chance-born device,
modified and improved, but unchang-
ed in principle, has been adopted by
more than 140 American cities with
a population of 3,OOO,O 900. And of
the legislatures which met in 1911,
sixteen were confronted with commits
sion government bills, the states of
New Jersey, Alabama, Utah, Mon
tana, Washington, Idaho, California,
Nebraska and Iowa adopting legis-