In 1917 the joint appropriation committee did not present the appropriation bill to the legislature until the final day of the session, when the bill was passed with little opportunity for examination or discussion. The procedure, however, was improved somewhat in 1918 by the fact that the joint committee submitted the appropriation bill to the legislature three or four days before final adjournment. A striking improvement has been made in the general form of the appropriation act. In the 1917 appropriation bill the amounts appropriated for each item were spelled out in full, classification was wanting, and there were no totals. It was, therefore, difficult for the legislators, or anyone else, to ascertain the total appropriated to any organization unit. The 1918 appropriations have been set up in items of sufficient detail to reflect the budget, and the amounts appropriated have been given in figures, extended to a column, and totaled for each organization unit. A compromise has also been effected to some extent between the highly itemized form of making appropriations and the lump-sum form. In practice the former method has proved too rigid to permit the proper exercise of administrative ability, and the latter form has been regarded as giving an opportunity for graft. The appropriations to a number of the state institutions have been made in lump-sum amounts with supporting schedules to control the expenditure of the funds. By sections 6 and 7 of the appropriation act the comptroller has been given the power to interpret the intention of the purpose of all appropriations.10 This is designed to give greater flexibility to the expenditure of the state's money. The budget law has also been amended to permit greater freedom of transfer by permission of the state house commission between items of appropriations granted to an organzation unit." All the appropriations for the fiscal year 1918-19, with two or three minor exceptions, have been included in the general appropriation act, so that practically all special appropriation acts are eliminated. Formerly, a large supplemental, or deficiency, appropriation bill was passed each year; but since the budget law forbids the passage of such bills, the legislature of 1917 placed in the hands of the state house commission the sum of half a million dollars to take care of all emergencies that might arise throughout the year. This policy, it is claimed, has worked well, and is to be continued. New Jersey has several laws recently enacted, the operation of which 10 Laws of 1918, ch. 221. 11 Laws of 1918, ch. 290. tend to develop and strengthen the financial system of the state. A central purchasing department, created in 1916, has operated successfully in conjunction with the budget system to secure greater economy in the expenditure of the public funds. All supplies of the various state departments and institutions are purchased through this central agency. Several laws were passed in 1917 providing a uniform. budget procedure for municipalities and counties of the state, and establishing a scientific policy for their financing in anticipation of the receipt of the tax revenues.13 The legislature of 1918 passed a law vesting the regulation and control of all the state charitable and correctional institutions in a state board of charities and corrections. This board has control of all appropriations made to these institutions and is the only agency that can submit to the governor their estimates, which may be reviewed and modified by the board before submission.14 Another law provides for the classification and salary standardization of the civil service of the state and the establishment of a bureau of personal service standards and records.15 A third law empowers the civil service commission to apply classification and standardization to the positions and employments in the civil service of the several counties. and municipalities.16 Massachusetts. In 1916 the economy and efficiency commission, established in 1912, and charged with the duties of examining the estimates and making financial investigations, was abolished and the office of supervisor of administration was created with practically the same budget duties as those of the commission. He is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the council for a term of three years, and is given authority to appoint a staff of assistants. Under a joint order of May 23, 1917, a joint special committee on finance and budget procedure was appointed, consisting of three senators and six representatives. This committee was directed to "concern. itself especially with a study of budget procedure" and to "report a preliminary budget or financial scheme for the fiscal year commencing December 1, 1917." The committee was formally organized on June 12 and sat during 12 Laws of 1916, ch. 58. 13 Laws of 1917, ch. 192, 153, 154, 155, 156 and 212. 14 Laws of 1918, ch. 147. Laws of 1918, ch. 24. 16 Laws of 1918, ch. 54. the remainder of 1917. It was divided into three subcommittees in order to cover the field of investigation for which the committee was created. The work of the committee was grouped under three main heads, namely: budget and other financial matters; motor vehicle fees and fines; and the consolidation of commissions. Each of these divisions was assigned to a subcommittee for investigation. Mr. L. H. Gulick, of the Training School of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, served as secretary to the committee. Estimates were received by the committee, numerous hearings were held, and the subcommittee on the budget visited practically all the institutions of the state to study at first hand their various needs. A preliminary budget plan for financing the state for the fiscal year 1918, together with an appropriation act was drawn up by this committee and submitted to the legislature in January, 1918.17 Special emphasis was laid upon the requests of institutions for capital outlay. In its report on state finances and the budget1s the committee discussed at length the defects of the present system of state financing, and recommended the adoption of a budget system in which "the governor must be connected with the preparation of the budget." An act was passed by the 1918 legislature1 requiring the supervisor of administration "to prepare a budget for the governor, setting forth such recommendations as the governor shall determine upon." The contents and general arrangement of the budget are prescribed. It must be submitted to the legislature not later than the second Wednesday of each January. All appropriations based upon the budget are required to be incorporated in a single bill. No legislative procedure for considering the budget is prescribed in the act. The constitutional convention of Massachusetts, which met during 1917, received five resolutions relating to the budget, all designed to increase the authority of the governor, and four providing for an executive budget, one of which was a copy of the Maryland amendment and another a modified form of it. This convention took a recess during the session of the legislature; and is again meeting to consider, among other things, the adoption of a budget system. Bureau of Municipal Research, New York City. 17 House doc., no. 17. A. E. BUCK. BOOK REVIEWS EDITED BY W. B. MUNRO Harvard University The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke. Begun by STEPHEN GWYNN, M.P. Completed and edited by Gertrude M. Tuckwell, Literary Executrix of Sir Charles W. Dilke. Two volumes. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1917. Pp. xix, 557; vii, 614.) Within a year after Sir Charles Dilke left Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and at the time when-in 1866-he was making a tour of the Englishspeaking world, he confided to his brother, Ashton Dilke, that he had educated himself and was still educating himself, so that he could be most useful as a statesman and as a writer. "My aim in life," he added, "is to be of the greatest use I can to the world at large, not because that is my duty, but because that is the course which will make my life happiest." Dilke was not born into the English governing class. His grandfather was owner of the Athenaeum and was associated in a managerial capacity with the Daily News in its early years. It was Charles Dilke's father on whom the baronetcy was conferred for his part in organizing the international exhibition of 1851 in London. But the grandfather was a publicist; and it was his grandfather who was chiefly responsible for Sir Charles Dilke's education and for the bent towards politics that was characteristic of Dilke even before he wrote from Denver, Colorado, the letter in which he informed his brother that he had begun his apprenticeship to statesmanship. Two years later Dilke was elected for Chelsea as a Radical; and except for an interval from 1886 to 1892 he was of the house of commons from 1868 to his death in 1910. Mr. Stephen Gwynn and Miss Gertrude Tuckwell's well-written, well-ordered, and exceptionally informing biography, tells with an interest that is continuous how Dilke, in seasons that were prosperous, and in seasons that were adverse, worked to realize the aim that in 1866 he had set before himself as his guiding principle in life. Dilke's prosperous season (1868-1885) brought him advancement to an amazing degree. By temperament, intellectual equipment and interest he was singularly well-adapted for both parliamentary and official life; and his advancement in the years from 1868 to 1885 is an indication of the extent to which politics at Westminster in the two decades that came after the second reform act became less and less a field reserved for the territorial governing class and its protégés. Dilke had no connection, direct or indirect, with the governing class. A man of his independence and outspokenness could never have sat for a nomination borough; although some nomination boroughs survived both the reform act of 1832 and that of 1867. Dilke would have been ill at ease as the representative of such a borough or as the protégé of any highlyplaced member of the governing class. He went into Parliament as the representative of a large London borough, in which, in the years from 1867 to 1884, the radical element was predominant. From his entrance into the house of commons he took politics seriously. It was his only business in life. He was assiduous in his work at Westminster; always kept in closest touch with his constituency; and the remarkable progress he made from 1868 to 1885 in the house and in the constituencies was due partly to his equipment, partly to his intense interest in politics, and to a considerable degree to the industry and thoroughness that were characteristic of his long political life. His prominence and service in the house of commons as an unofficial member, and his acceptability in the constituencies as an exponent of advanced Liberalism, had by 1879 secured for him so well-established a place in the Liberal party, that in that year Beaconsfield, always alert to note the development of new ability in the political world, predicted that Dilke would be Gladstone's successor. Gladstone himself arrived at the same conclusion in 1882, after Dilke had served two years in the first office to which he was appointed-that of under-secretary for foreign affairs in the Liberal administration of 1880-85. Promotion came quickly to Dilke. He was of the cabinet as president of the local government board by the end of 1882; and the premiership was well in sight when, to the astonishment and dismay of the political world of England, he was cited as co-respondent in the Crawford case that came before the divorce court in London in 1885. Dilke was dismissed from the suit. His biographers are convinced that the allegations against him were unfounded. But their history of the case is not convincing. It is the least satisfactory chapter in a biography that for many years to come must rank high in the political literature |