Public library, supported by money voted by the council, five trustees. Term five years. No salary. Park department-three commissioners. No salary.1 Term three years. Water department-board of three which controls the waterworks and fixes price of water. Term three years. Assessors' department-five chief assessors, to value real and personal property, and assess city, county, and State taxes. Term three years. City collector, who levies tax bills delivered to him by the assessors. Appointed annually. The following further officers are appointed by the mayor and aldermen. For five years-five commissioners of Cedar Grove Cemetery (unpaid); for three years-three registrars of voters, six sinking fund commissioners (unpaid); for one year-two record commissioners (unpaid), five directors of ferries (unpaid), five trustees of Mount Hope Cemetery (unpaid), city treasurer, city auditor, corporation counsel, city solicitor, superintendent of public buildings, city architect, superintendent of street lights, superintendent of sewers, superintendent of printing, superintendent of Faneuil Hall Market, superintendent of bridges, city surveyor, water registrar, registrar of births, deaths, and marriages, harbour master and ten assistants, commission for certain bridges, inspector of provisions, inspector of milk and vinegar, sealer (and four deputy sealers) of weights and measures, nine hundred and sixty-eight election officers and their deputies. The above (so far as paid) are paid by salary fixed by the council. The following officers, also appointed annually by mayor and aldermen, are paid by fees: Inspector of lime, three inspectors of petroleum, fifteen inspectors of pressed hay, culler of hoops and staves, three fence viewers, ten field drivers and pound keepers, three surveyors of marble, nine superintendents of hay scales, four measurers of upper leather, fifteen measurers of wood and bark, twenty measurers of grain, three weighers of beef, thirty-eight weighers of coal, five weighers of boilers and heavy machinery, four weighers of ballast and lighters, ninety-two undertakers, one hundred and fifty constables. 1 This board supervises the suburban parks, the Common, and the Public Garden (together with smaller open spaces), within the city, being under the charge of a superintendent separately appointed. In addition to these there is a city clerk, city messenger, and clerk of committees elected by concurrent vote of the City Council, a clerk of the common council elected by that body, and many county officers elected by the voters of the county of Suffolk, in which Boston stands, and of which Boston furnishes nearly the whole population. The county judges, however, are not elected, but, like all other judges in Massachusetts, are appointed by the Governor and Council to hold office quam diu se bene gesserint. Exclusive of election officers and fee-paid officers, the mayor and aldermen appoint 107 persons, of whom 65 are appointed for one year, 61 receive salaries, and 41 serve gratuitously. In the present city administration there are forty separate departments and offices, most of them with a large number of subordinates and workmen. This "multiplicity of departments and departments not only involves the city in expenses not to be measured merely by the salaries paid to superfluous officials," but affords a large field for the exercise of party patronage, a patronage partially limited, but as regards subordinates only, by the Massachusetts Civil Service Act of 1884, which is administered by a Civil Service Commission. Distinct from the rest of the city government is the School Committee of twenty-four members, elected on a general ticket over the whole city, and serving for three years, eight retiring annually. Also distinct is the Police Department, which, as already observed, has by a statute of 1885 been entrusted to a Board of Police, appointed by the Governor and Council, of three citizens of Boston, with power to "appoint, establish, and organize" the police, and to license, regulate, and restrain the sale of intoxicating liquors.2 In case of riot, the mayor can take command of the police force. The city of St. Louis (population in 1880, 350,518) is governed by a charter or scheme of government which, in pursuance of a special provision for that purpose in the new Constitution of Missouri (1875), was prepared by a board of thirteen freeholders elected by 1 Report of the Commission of 1884. 2 In the cities and towns of Massachusetts the question of granting licences for the sale of intoxicants is annually submitted to popular vote. See note to Chapter LXVI. At present in Boston and most cities the grant has been voted. The annual revenue derived from licences is in Boston over $500,000 (£100,000) per annum. the people of the city and county of St. Louis, and was finally adopted and ratified by the people themselves by a vote at the polls, August 22, 1876.1 St. Louis is divided into 28 wards and 244 voting precincts. Elections are governed by a strict law, which generally prevents frauds, and are quiet, all drinking saloons being closed till midnight. The mayor is elected by the people for four years, receives $5000 (£1000) salary, is not a member of the city Assembly, with which he communicates by messages. He has the power of returning any bill passed by the Assembly, subject to a power in them to reconsider and pass by a two-thirds vote. He recommends measures to the Assembly, submits reports from the heads of departments, and has a great variety of minor executive duties. He appoints to a large number of important offices, but in conjunction with the Council (upper house of the Assembly). For the sake of protecting him from the pressure of those to whom he owes his election, these appointments are made by him at the beginning of the third year of his own term, and for a term of four years. The Assembly is composed of two houses. The Council consists of thirteen members, elected for four years by "general ticket": one-third go out of office every second year. The House of Delegates consists of twenty-eight members, one from each ward. Each Assembly man receives $300 a year, besides his reasonable expenses incurred in the city service. The Assembly has a general legislative power and supervision over all departments, its borrowing and taxing powers being, however, limited. The administrative departments are the following, viz.:-Thirteen officers elected by the people, viz. comptroller, treasurer, auditor, registrar, collector, marshal, inspector of weights and measures, president of board of assessors, coroner, sheriff, recorder of deeds, public administrator, president of board of public improvements. Twenty Boards or officers are appointed, most of them for four years, by the mayor with the approval of the Council, viz.-Board of public improvements, consisting of street commissioner, water do., harbour do., park do., sewer do., assessor and collector of water 1 I abridge the following account from a valuable paper by Mr. Marshall S. Snow (professor of history in Washington University, St. Louis), on the "City Government of St. Louis," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, third series. rates, commissioner of public buildings, commissioner of supplies, commissioner of health, inspector of boilers, city counsellor, jury commissioner, recorder of votes, city attorney, two police court judges, jailer, superintendent of workhouse, chief fire engineer, gas inspector, assessors, and several city contractors and minor officers. The four police commissioners who, along with the mayor, are charged with the public safety of St. Louis, are appointed by the Governor of Missouri, with the view of keeping this department out of city politics.' In 1886 the police force was 593 men strong, besides 200 private watchmen, paid by their employers, but wearing a uniform and sworn in by the police board. The city School Board consists of 28 members, one from each ward, elected for three years, one-third retiring annually. It is independent of the mayor and Assembly, chooses its staff and all teachers, has charge of the large school funds, and levies a school tax, which, however, the city collector collects. The strong points of this charter are deemed to be "the length of term of its municipal officers; the careful provisions for honest registration and the party purity of elections; the checks on financial administration and limitations of the debt, and the fact that the important offices to which the mayor appoints are not vacant till the beginning of his third year of office, so that as rewards of political work done during a heated campaign they are too far in the distance to prejudice seriously the merits of an election."1 On the whole the charter has worked well. Nevertheless the European reader will feel some surprise at the number of elective offices and at the limited terms for which all important offices are held. He will note that even in democratic America the control of the police by city politicians has been deemed too dangerous to be suffered to remain in their hands. And he will contrast what may be called the political character of the whole city constitution with the somewhat simpler and less ambitious, though also less democratic arrangements, which have been found sufficient for the management of European cities. 1 Snow, ut supra. CHAPTER LI THE WORKING OF CITY GOVERNMENTS Two tests of practical efficiency may be applied to the government of a city: What does it provide for the people, and what does it cost the people? Space fails me to apply in detail the former of these tests, by showing what each city does or omits to do for its inhabitants; so I must be content with observing that in the United States generally constant complaints are directed against the bad paving and cleansing of the streets, the non-enforcement of the laws forbidding gambling and illicit drinking, and in some places against the sanitary arrangements and management of public buildings and parks. It would appear that in the greatest cities there is far more dissatisfaction than exists with the municipal administration in such cities as Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Dublin. The following indictment of the government of Philadelphia is, however, exceptional in its severity, and however well founded as to that city, must not be taken to be typical. A memorial presented to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1883 by a number of the leading citizens of the Quaker City contained these words : "The affairs of the city of Philadelphia have fallen into a most deplorable condition. The amounts required annually for the pay |