Civil Service Reform and Municipal Govern

ment.

FIRST PAPER.

BY ALBERT SHAW.

WE have been talking much in this country of Municipal Reform; and that phrase, when applied to existing conditions in various cities, embraces obviously, a great range and diversity of specific needs. But it is well for us that we should understand clearly that, in the present stage of our progress, Municipal Reform means before all else civil service reform, and that the abolition of the personal and party spoils system from our municipal administrations is the one and only remedy for the worst of our present evils in city govern

ment.

Good government in itself is a fit and desirable. thing, and patriotism demands it; for how can the citizen love his country as he ought if its administration is habitually corrupt and inefficient, and if there is altogether lacking in the exercise of public authority the attributes of disinterestedness, of dignity, and of equal beneficence towards all citizens, regardless of party, race, or other distinction? Nevertheless, while I do not fail to appreciate the fitness and the moral beauty of good government as an abstract consideration, I have always, in the application of government to local and municipal affairs, preferred to think of government as a means to an end rather than an object in itself.

Municipal government in our day has come to be Collectivism, on a vast and ever more diversified scale. I am familiar with the abstract discussions, current

nowadays, dealing with the question whether or not municipal government may be rightly termed a matter of business. These discussions deal only with definitions. They play with words and phrases. I am not able to see that they bear upon the real work that we have before us in this country.

Nor do I see anything practical to be gained at present by arguments, either for or against the extension of the working functions of municipal government in the direction of local Collectivism, or, as some people prefer to put it, Socialism. The principles of municipal collectivism were established long ago. What we have to deal with now is the practical working out of those principles in concrete instances, as such instances arise.

Inasmuch as we are not going to revive the system of private wells and town pumps, but are universally committed in all enlightened cities to a public water supply, it clearly behooves us to see that the public supply is procured and distributed upon the best possible engineering, financial, and sanitary principles. Inasmuch as we have no intention of going back in this country to the very recent period of private cesspools and open drains, it behooves us to deal in the most enlightened way with the problem of drainage, to the end that the sewer system may perfectly fit the local situation, and that the ultimate sewage disposal may meet the requirements of sanitary science, with a due regard to the economic principles involved. Since good streets, well made and well kept, are a public necessity, and we have no intention of relapsing to primitive conditions in that respect, it plainly devolves upon us to make the paving as good and as durable as engineering experience can devise, and to clean the streets as perfectly as the health and comfort of the community would require. Inasmuch as we do not intend to revert to the period when vagrancy, common begging, street rowdyism, and a great variety of ordinary nuisances and minor misdemeanors were freely tolerated as a matter of course, but on the contrary do intend to maintain

conditions of order, decency, and safety throughout the bounds of the community, it needs no argument to show that we ought to avail ourselves of the best possible methods in the organization and management of the police service, and of the establishments that have to do with the detention and correction of offenders and with the relief of distress. Since, furthermore, we have long ago accepted the principle that it is both the right and the duty of the community to make provision for the instruction of all children, to the end that our average standards of civilization may not decline in the process of transmission from one generation to the next, it is plain enough that our public schools ought to be as good as they can possibly be made, and that their methods ought, from time to time, to be adjusted to meet the new needs of a changing situation.

These statements are the merest commonplace. The man who in our day would argue against good water, good drainage, good streets and good schools, as proper things for a community to secure by collective action, would be looked upon as a mere anachronism, or else as an after-dinner theorizer whose views have nothing to do with those practical concerns that belong to the working hours of the day.

And yet, while everybody believes that these things belong to what may be called the irreducible minimum of a modern city's public necessities, how many of our cities actually possess them? Certainly not many. If the water supply suffices in quantity, in too many instances it falls short in quality. If the ramification of sewers is sufficient to collect liquid waste, it too frequently happens that proper provision is not made for the disposal of sewage. If the street system is judiciously laid out, it is seldom the case that good paving extends beyond a few streets, or that there is any efficient system for keeping the streets clean. If the school houses provide places enough for the children who ought to attend, which is not the case in the great majority of our large towns, it is seldom that the system or the methods of instruction come any

where near meeting the proper demands of the present day.

Now I am well aware that I have sometimes been accused of presenting an unduly favorable view of contemporary conditions in European cities. I have only to reply that what I have said about cities abroad is in plain print and is true. In many things that belong to the functions of the modern city, most of the European towns are relatively in advance of our own. Nor is it true that the better municipal appointments of European cities are to be attributed either to their greater age or to their superior wealth; for they are not so rich as our cities by any means, nor, considered as modern urban communities, are they any older. All cities of the modern type belong to the existing regime of steam transportation and industry. For all purposes that municipal administration has now to concern itself with, the modern city is nowhere fifty years old. Considered as a great urban centre, Chicago is of about the same age as Berlin; and Boston, New York and Baltimore are as old as Glasgow, London and Hamburg. sidered for purposes of modern improvements, Cincinnati, for example, is as old as any city of its size in Europe, and richer than almost any that could be. named.

Why, then, to cut short these comparisons, have European cities accomplished more than our own in these practical, concrete directions? I have thought about the matter a good deal, and have investigated it very considerably, studying home conditions quite as carefully as I have those abroad, although I have written more about European cities. And I have reached one firm conclusion, which is that with anything like as good administration in this country as in Europe, we should have been not simply as far advanced in our municipal appointments, but vastly further advanced than the European cities, because all the material conditions have been so much more favorable in our own country.

We have done many things extremely well in this

country, for the reason that private initiative possesses intense energy and high efficiency. And it has happened once in a while, by a stroke of luck, that some department of public administration has for the moment borrowed the personal resources of private enterprise. Now, it happens that in England, France and Germany, municipal work is carried on under a system which normally gives the public the benefit of the best efforts of the best trained men. With us, public work is carried on under a system which normally gives the public something less than the best efforts of men who average far below the best.

Previous to 1890, New York had spent vastly more money for street paving than any city of comparable size or conditions in Europe; and yet New York had only one or two well-paved streets. And this is typical. No language can well exaggerate the frightful losses that American communities have suffered in the thirty years since the civil war through bad administration. Thousands of millions of dollars would only begin to express the tangible losses. And I hold the spoils annex of the American party system as chiefly responsible for this waste of resources and of opportunities.

Certain American visitors, who have recently taken a glance here and there at politics in Europe, have come home to sneer at the demands of those in this country who advocate administrative reform in our cities and who sometimes cite European experiences as affording instructive lessons. These scornful personages have in their turn sought to convince the people of this country that partisanship prevails in precisely the same way in European cities, and particularly in those of England, as we have been accustomed to see partisanship prevail in our American cities.

I absolutely deny that this is true. It is true, that,— to an extent which would seem to me to be unfortunate, -the annual elections which fill one-third of the seats in the municipal councils of England have recently been fought to an increasing extent upon the Liberal and Conservative lines of the national parties. Neverthe