The Sentinel=record., 1914-06-21

was the system Of proportional repre-. sentation adopted.
 Under the general term 'Commis.
 sion Pan there is a very great va. riety of detail included in the various charters. In some cities the com.
 missioners are required to give only a portion of their time to the service of the city, while in others they must give it all In some, as in Hous. ton, extraordinary powers are given to the presiding members of the com mission, termed the mayor, including the veto power; in most cases, how ever, the so-called mayor has no veto.
 In some charters the members of the
 commission are elected as heads of
 the various departments, while in
 others they are simply elected com
 missloners and distribute the duties
 of the various heads of departments
 amongst themselves; and i1 some
 others the sp-called mayor assigns
 the other members to duty in the va
 rious departments of the city govern
 ment. The essential features, how
 ever, of the genuine commission plan
 are the abolition of the wards with
 the resulting election at large of all
 the commissioners, and placing in
 the hands of these commissioners all
 the powers of the mayor and coun-
 cil and the additional power of ap-
 pointing all their administrative sub
 ordinates. The commissioners are the only officials elected by popular
 vote.
 The commission plan has been com
 pared to the organization of a busi-
 ness corporation, but, as it is ordinar- fly composed, the anaIogy is not per feet. Believing that a better and more effective organization could be had by perfecting it's resemblance to the corporation, the Chamber of Com merce of Lockport, N. Y, devised the so called Lockport Plan. This was apparently built up by merging the ordinary commission plan with the
 business manager plan,' in use for some years in Stau1ton, Va. The
 Lockport Plan was introduced in the legislature at Albany in a bin en- tilted The Third Class Optional Act and was promptly defeated by the united action of the henchmen of Boss Barnes of Albany, an alleged re- publican, and Boss Murphy of New
 York, an alleged democrat.
 Since the principal effect of the commission plan. wherever adopted, has been to put the boss out of busi- ness, it was very natural that these two bosses should unite their forces and make common cause against their common enemy, the common people. So evident was it in Des Moines that the principal effect under the adop- tion of the commission plaa in that city was the destruction of the power of the boss and the elimination of politics from city government, that it inspired the title of Hamilton's work on Des Moines, The Dethronement of the Boss.
 I cepted by students of municipal gov. ernmelt as a distinct improvement on the ordinary commission plan, and in South Carolina it has been adopted by the city of Sumter. The distinctive feature of this Lockport of Sumter plan is the election, at large, of the which, however, has no administrative duties. 1t is purely legislative and its members are the only officials elected by popular vote. The commission appoints a municipal expert as business manager and he, in turn, appoints the heads of the va rious deartments, subject to confir- nation by the commission. The com mission also appoints an auditor, who acts as the eye of the commission and keeps it constantly informed as to al, the financial transactions of, all the departments; each head of a depart ment makes all the appointments in his department, and the line of re- sponsibility runs directly through each head of a department to and through the business manager up to the commission, and the commission CTS in turn being directly responsible to the electorate through the initia. tive, referendum and recall.
 The principal cause of failure of the ordinary pian of municipal gov in the United States was in- which resulted in waste and extravagance. The first under lying powber of government is based on taxation, and, therefore, has to deal with financial management. This fact of the importance of finance in government extends all the way from the levying and collecting of taxes through their appropriation, and spending, to the final accounting for every sum so spent; hence, eff ciency in government is necessarily intimately associated with financial responsibility. This fact has been established by the experi- ence of the Bureau of MunicipaI Re search of New York City. This bu- reau was the outcome of the desire of certain citizens to find what be-