It is through co-operation that the best things are done. A village or a city working alone cannot accomplish what it can if it joins efforts with others who are interested in the same work.

The municipality which wishes to keep in touch with its neighbors should hold a membership in the League of Minnesota Municipalities.

The League holds a conventon each October at which the problems of the municipalities of Minnesota are thoroughly discussed both by scientific experts and by municipal officials who are dealing with those problems at home.

The League publishes the proceedings of its conventions, together with a great deal of other municipal information, in the bi-monthly issues of MINNESOTA MUNICIPALITIES, which is sent to the councilmen and officials of member municipalities.

Besides receiving subscriptions to MINNESOTA MUNICIPALITIES for municipal officials, each member of the League is entitled to use the classified advertising columns of MINNESOTA MUNICIPALITIES without charge.

The League is affiliated with the Municipal Reference Bureau of the University of Minnesota, which makes investigations and answers inquiries upon all phases of municipal government and administration. The service is free.

The cost of membership is very low (see schedule of fees on inside back cover page). The benefits derived from the League conventions and publications are worth many times the cost.

Plans, Specifications, Supervisions, Reports for Water, Sewers, Electric Light, Hydro-Electric Development Specialty of combined plans for Municipal Utilities covering your needs for a term of years. City Flanning Engineering Experts to Municipalities

PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY BY

The League of Minnesota Municipalities

Entered as second-class matter April 28, 1916, at the Post Office at
Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879

This is a time of testing of democratic government, the like of which has not happened thrice before in our history. The entrance of our country into the war has thrown upon the federal government the tremendous burden of raising, equipping, and training greater forces than have been under arms since the Civil war. The financial program of the first year, a program regarded as a preliminary to our active participation in this mighty adventure, involves the expenditure for war purposes alone of more than the total cost of the Civil War to the United States government. To a less degree state governments are confronted with like problems: Minnesota has doubled her tax rate for state purposes, largely "on account of the war."

The city official does not have the charge of operations in the prosecution of the war. He does not thereby escape the war's problems. It reacts upon him and his work in a hundred ways. Some new problems it begets to vex him, and almost every old one it renders more pressing. The municipal official must prove himself as never before. The ways of that proving may often be obscure, there will rarely be marked recognition of success. Conspicuousness will more often be the consequence of failure.

The municipal official who has thought the situation through is willing to accept it and give the best that is in him. He will upon occasions render every aid in the prosecution of war plans. He will not pretend to any voice in the direction of those plans, but he will exemplify in all his acts the genuine patriotism of his community. He will carry his load for democracy by maintaining the character and performance of his municipal government.

He will have enough to do at that. The task of maintaining order will increase in perplexity, as the excitement of war times tends to unsettle all classes. Those with a predilection for mischief will be stimulated to gratify it. It is perhaps the saddest of all the war's evils that delinquency among children and youth is aggravated. To some degree this is due to the war spirit and may be inevitable, but it can be minimized. It is due in larger part to the relaxation of attention from elders absent or absorbed in the war, when of all times it is most dangerous to leave children to devices of their own finding. Repressive measures result in injury to juvenile offenders and are not even efficacious for preventing disturbances. The need for parks and

playgrounds, and for leaders who shall save the children from idleness and mischief, was never so imperative as at this time. Garden work and other employment will occupy much time, but work is not sufficient in itself. England has found it necessary to restore the recreational activities which she hastily abandoned in the beginning of the war. Hand in hand with recreational work must go the maintenance of the schools. The ruined cities may be rebuilt, and wasted wealth may be restored by labor after the war. But to deny or destroy or limit the child's opportunity to secure his schooling would be to work irreparable injury both to him and to the future welfare of the country.

A task which the city official may share with other community agencies is that of wisely providing for the dependents of men gone to the front. They will be left, in greater numbers or less, in every community. It will not be charity, but no less than a first civic duty to see that they do not unduly suffer, that the family which has contributed a soldier shall not be dispersed, that no child whose father is fighting shall thereby be kept out of school or overworked.

Public health work can in no way be slackened without grave injury. A slump in this activity would be inexcusable. Merely to hold ground already gained would be little enough.

Throughout the war its victims will be coming back crippled in various degrees, and often incapacitated for the employment which occupied them before. Much can be done to rehabilitate them as active producing members of society, by enabling them to learn new ways of earning a living, and by finding employment for them in the work which they can do.

Our city official will study to distinguish which activities of his municipal government must be kept up or increased, and which can wisely be retrenched and deferred. He will recognize that on the one hand a policy of shortsighted "economy" in matters of public health and education would be a wanton waste, and that on the other hand a program of constructing great public works which can wait and which withdraw materials and labor from the war industries is equally so. He will foresee that when the war closes materials will be procurable at prices below the present abnormal levels, and that labor will be in need of employment. By postponing projects not immediately vital, and by preparing to take them up during the critical period of unemployment and industrial readjustment at the close of the war he will be serving both his own city and his whole country.

As he is confronted with a difficult task, so he needs to reason coolly and to act surely. He has to choose those things to do which will conserve the strength of America and contribute to the victory of democracy; he has to choose those things to avoid or postpone which would distract or hamper the prosecution of the wider purpose. He will surely do much thinking as he carries on his work through these severe conditions, and he will attain a more profound conception of the part which his office bears to his city, and of that which his city bears to his state and to his country, and to the democracy of the world.

Keep The Death Rate Down

We are told that the death rate of Europe has decreased during the war, notwithstanding the death on the battlefields of tens of thousands of men who in peace conditions would have lived years longer. If this is true, it is to be explained only by the saving at home of other tens of thousands of lives, of people who would have died in peace conditions such as obtained before the war. This saving has been achieved almost entirely by increasing the scope and the efficacy of public health and accident prevention work. We have grown accustomed to reading large numbers in reports of preventable ill health, accidents, and deaths. Upon occasions a startling epidemic or disaster has horrified us into taking large and effective measures in the case of this or that particular disease or industry. We have been pleased at the improvement usually noted over past conditions, and have overlooked the inexcusable slowness of the advance. We have winced when we learned the number of lives and the amount of ill health and disability which a less miserly support of prevention services would have saved. We have found a multitude of excuses, in this or that obstacle, in the indifference of the people, in the hostility of taxpayers, in the more immediate news power of activities resulting in material improvements or political preferment.

It is useless to reproach or to lament that in times of peace such petty hindrances were permitted to hold back the work of conserving human life and energy. Now the war is here, and the paramount importance of that work cannot be denied. England has shown what can be done. America must sweep small obstacles aside, and do at least as much, or more. Let no one imagine that it cannot be done. It will require a program and a knowledge of methods; we have them abundantly at hand. It will require unstinted financial support; tunds can be provided. It will require the resolution of officials and citizens to do all things needful when and as they should be done.

Doing this, we shall not count it as a glory of war, for it has been at our hands to do during many years of peace. The war changes our responsibili ty only by throwing it into sharper relief. There can no longer be any palliation of ineffectual support of the struggle against disease and death. The questions of life or death and of sickness or health are to be decided for thousands of infants, and for other thousands of adults, solely by the public. efforts to make life and health possible in the conditions among which those thousands have to live. We cannot afford to be recreant now. The price of complacency and neglect is too great, and too gruesome.

Remember The Convention

City officials should arrange their calendars to include attendance at the Fifth Annual Convention of the League, October 17 and 18, 1917. As the first convention after the United States' entry into the war it will have an

added importance and value. The attendance of previous years should be at least doubled. Five hundred delegates will be none too many.

About the same amount of work will be laid out as in previous years, and will be thoroughly performed. When completed the program will be published by the League, most probably in a uniform style with the eight page folders of the last two years. It will not be elaborate, and it will carry no advertising.

Municipal Borrowing*

By Joseph J. Ermatinger

pal debt was $925,000,000; in 1902, $1,630,000,000, an increase of seventysix per cent; and in 1913 $3,476,000,000, an increase of one hundred thirteen per cent over 1902.

Thus in twenty years the municipal debt nearly quadrupled in size; and in the last eleven years it more than doubled. At this pace the debt will reach seven billions in 1924.

New York City spends annually per cent. In 1890 the total net municimore money than the National Government, if we omit the cost of the post office and the military establishments. Its budget calls for about $200,000,000 for operation, and about $85,000,000 for local improvements. On January 1, 1916, its total debt was $1,378,625,000. Annually it averages about $60,000,000 for new bonds, and its debt service burden also approximates this figure. New York has about reached the constitutional debt limit of ten per cent, even after due deductions for bonds issued for public enterprises. And New York's financial problems, in a less degree, are the problems of nearly every other American city. Our municipal finances have been and still are in a more or less chaotic state.

In 1890, the combined net debt of the Federal Government, all the states and all their civic divisions was $1,989,000,000; in 1902, $2.839,000,000; and in 1913, $4,850,000,000. During this period, the Federal debt decreased from $136.30 per capita to $10.59; twenty cents is all the increase shown in the state per capita, it being now $3.57. It is in the municipal debt, that we find the tremendous growth; in 1890, it was $14.79 and in 1913, $35.81, an increase of one hundred forty-three

To what causes can we assign this tremendous growth in the municipal debt? First, the unprecedented expansion of our cities. In 1790, there was but one city with a population of 30,000 inhabitants or over, eight-tenths of one per cent of the nation; in 1890, there were one hundred three of such cities with a total population of 12,612,000, or twenty per cent of the nation; and finally, in 1915, we find two hundred four of such cities with 31,168,150 inhabitants or thirty-one per cent of the nation. In brief, in a quarter of century. urban population in cities of 30,000 inhabitants, or more, increased one hundred forty-seven per cent. Late figures are not available for cities of three thousand or more people, but it is a safe approximation to say that fully sixty per cent of our people live in urban communities. Second, the enormous

*Read at the Fourth Annual Convention of the League of Minnesota Municipalities, October 19. 1916.