Social Civics

What is a City?—The poet Cowper once said that “God made the country and man made the town”, a remark which was not intended to flatter the cities. Nor is there any reason why life in a crowded community should particularly appeal to poets although it may have a strong fascination for more worldly-minded men. A large body of people living closely together, a place of busy streets and tall buildings, a huge, noisy, jostling throng—that is the customary notion of an American city, and on the whole it is not far wide of the facts. Not all cities, however, are big, busy, and congested. In the entire United States there are today about a thousand places which call themselves cities, yet more than half of them are places of less than fifteen thousand people. In Massachusetts no place can become a city until it has at least ten thousand people; but in Oklahoma the figure is two thousand and in Kansas only two hundred. A city may be anything, therefore, from a rural hamlet with only a few hundred people to a great metropolitan community with several millions. Size or population are not the things that determine cityhood. A place is a city if it has been so incorporated and possesses a city charter. So far as its government is concerned, it cannot be called a city, no matter how populous it may be, unless it has been given a charter by authority of the state.^[65] In the West the practice has been to grant such charters to relatively small places; in the East the requirements are more strict.

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—Population in Places of 8,000 Inhabitants or More: 1790-1920.
		PLACES OF 8,000 INHABITANTS OR MORE.
CENSUS YEAR.	Total Population.	Population.	Number of places.	Per cent of total population.
1920	105,710,620	46,307,640	924	43.8
1910	91,972,256	35,570,334	768	38.7
1900	75,994,575	25,018,335	547	32.9
1890	62,947,714	18,244,239	445	29.0
1880	50,155,783	11,365,698	285	22.7
1870	38,558,371	8,071,875	226	20.9
1860	31,443,321	5,072,256	141	16.1
1850	23,191,876	2,897,586	85	12.5
1840	17,069,453	1,453,994	44	8.5
1830	12,866,020	864,509	26	6.7
1820	9,638,453	475,135	13	4.9
1810	7,239,881	356,920	11	4.9
1800	5,308,483	210,873	6	4.0
1790	3,929,214	131,472	6	3.3

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The Phenomenal Growth of Cities.—The remarkable drift of population into the cities has already been pointed out. It is one of the most striking social facts in American history during the past hundred years.^[66] In the days when the national constitution was framed there were only eight or ten places that could be called cities and even these were, with one or two exceptions, nothing but good-sized towns. New York, the largest of them, had a population of less than 50,000; it has grown a hundred-fold since that time. In Washington’s day no country had as many as fifty cities and the largest city in the world, London, had less than a million people. The cities counted for very little in the early days of the Republic; they then contained less than five per cent of the national population. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, cities sprang into existence everywhere; a large part of the immigration poured into them; the development of industry and commerce built them up; and today about half the people of the United States reside in cities of all sizes. There are now more cities in America than in any other country and more large cities. We have twelve great centers with populations exceeding half a million,^[67] while the entire British empire (including India, Canada, and Australia) has only ten; Germany has only four and France has only two. At the present rate of progress the United States in 1950 will probably contain more large cities than all the rest of the world put together. The causes of this remarkable growth have been indicated elsewhere and there is no need to repeat them. Factories, railroads, and steamships have been the great factors in this urban expansion.

Effects of City Growth upon the National Life.—The growth of large cities has had profound effects upon American life and temperament. It has changed the whole character of the country, its problems and its habits of mind. A century ago the United States was predominantly an agricultural land; the great majority of the people were engaged in earning their living from the soil. They had the same occupation and common interests. |1. Diversity of occupation.| But with the growth of industries in cities the occupations of the people have become diversified, and no bond of common vocation holds the population together. The city-worker in the shops and factories is employed at a specialized task which the division of labor assigns to him (see pp. 44-46); he develops expertness at this one task and depends upon others for everything else. The farmer supplies many of his own wants, but the industrial worker depends almost wholly upon others. |2. The absence of strong home ties.| Among the rural population there is a large property-owning class, men who own their farms and homes; but in the cities, particularly in the larger cities, the great majority of the people live in homes that are owned by others. In New York City seven families out of every eight live in rented houses or apartments; in Boston four out of every five. This tends to make the population restless; the people are constantly moving about from one job to another and from one home to another; they do not acquire a strong attachment to any neighborhood, as is the case in rural districts. One result of this is that people in the crowded centers know little about their neighbors, and strange as it may seem, the crowded sections of the large cities are in some respects the most lonely places in the world.^[68]

The tendency of the city population is to become absorbed in its daily work, to depend upon the newspapers for its opinions and to display marked docility in obeying its leaders. The people of the cities depend upon official or professional organizations for pretty nearly everything: if disorder breaks out, they expect the police to attend to it; when they want recreation, they expect the city authorities to provide it (by furnishing parks, playgrounds, band concerts, neighborhood dances, and so on); the functions of the home are largely given over to the school, the club, and the social organizations. The city is thought to be radical; but it is radical only in spots. Its population as a whole tends to be conservative (see p. 108, footnote).

The city is a place where extremes meet. Great wealth and abject poverty exist in the cities side by side; in the rural districts there is a closer approach to a common level. The same is true if we compare city and country from the standpoint of education, earning-power, obedience to law, respect for government, or any other social feature. The city runs to extremes; it contains both the highest erudition and the most utter ignorance; it has earners of enormous incomes and plenty of people who can earn no incomes at all; it has reactionaries in one quarter and anarchists in another—a strange social mosaic when you study it and very much in contrast with the general uniformity of the rural area.

Nevertheless, along nearly all lines of activity the cities lead the nation. To say that half the people live in cities does not tell the whole story. The influence which this half exerts is greater than its numerical strength implies. The cities are the headquarters of those who direct the great industries, the transportation systems, and the banking interests of the country. The newspapers of the great cities influence the moulding of public opinion the country over. The political power of the cities, their influence upon every phase of public policy is very great. Hence the character and the spirit of the cities will go far to determine the national characteristics of the future.

The City and the State.—The inhabitants of a city are a corporate body with certain legal rights and privileges. These rights are granted to them by the state in their city charter.^[69] The charter is a document having the force of law; it enumerates the powers of the city, tells what form of government the inhabitants shall have, and determines the duties of the various city officials. In the larger cities it is a very long document covering a hundred printed pages or more.

How are these charters framed and under what arrangements are they granted to cities? Three or four different plans are in vogue. In some states the legislature has passed a general law relating to cities, and their charters are all alike in accordance with the provisions of this law. The difficulty with this plan is that cities differ greatly in size and in the nature of their problems. The charter that suits one may not fit another. A seaport city, for example, needs a harbor commission with power to license pilots and regulate the anchoring-places of ships; but it is absurd to require, for the sake of uniformity, that inland cities shall also have harbor boards. To render this general charter system more flexible, therefore, some states have adopted the expedient of dividing cities, according to their size, into three or four classes and giving a uniform charter to all cities in the same class.^[70]

A more common method is to deal with each city as a special case, giving it a charter by special act of the legislature, the result of this plan being that no two cities of the state are governed in exactly the same way. The special charter system has the merit of adapting the form of government to the immediate needs of each particular city; but it places a great burden upon the legislature, for whenever any city desires an amendment to its charter a special legislative act is necessary. The system also encourages the legislature to interfere in city affairs, making changes in city charters on its own initiative without any request from the citizens. This is particularly objectionable because so many members of the legislature come from rural districts and consequently have little or no knowledge of the city’s problems.

Municipal Home Rule.—In order to diminish this interference by the legislature many states have made provision for municipal home rule. This is a plan whereby cities make their own charters just as states frame their own constitutions. The methods by which they do this vary somewhat from state to state but everywhere the main idea is the same. The voters of the city elect a charter commission, or board of freeholders as it is sometimes called. This miniature constitutional convention, made up of perhaps fifteen or twenty members, proceeds to draw up the provisions of a new city charter. When their work is finished they submit it to the people of the city at an election and if the people approve it, the charter goes into effect. In some states there are certain formalities to be gone through after the people have voted, but the important thing is that each city obtains, sooner or later, whatever sort of charter its voters desire. In this way the city becomes supreme in the handling of its own local affairs.

But the principle of municipal home rule is subject to some important practical limitations, most of which can be indicated by asking the question “What are local affairs?” Where is the line to be drawn between things which concern only the inhabitants of the city and those which affect the interests of the whole state. At first glance it might seem as though the care of streets, the maintenance of police, the provision of a water-supply system, and the control of education were matters of local concern, which each city ought to handle as its citizens deem best.

But are any of them strictly local in nature? The main streets of the city are arteries of traffic which link up with the state highways; were it not for the speed-limit signs, it would be difficult to tell where one class of streets ends and the other begins. The city police enforce the state laws and it is hardly plausible to urge that the state legislature shall have no control over the enforcement of its own statutes. The work of the city police is not, therefore, a matter of strictly local concern. So it is with health regulation, water supply, education, poor-relief, and many other municipal functions. The state cannot allow the children of any community to grow illiterate; it cannot afford to take the risk of an epidemic through the defective care of the public health in some negligent city; and it cannot fairly be expected to stand by idly when a city neglects the sick or the poor because its taxpayers wish to save money. Municipal home rule, if it were permitted to cover all these things, would be another name for local chaos. The relations between a city and the surrounding country are so intimate, and each depends so much upon the other, that no rigid line of separation between local and general interests can be drawn. To make every city a little sovereign republic, wrapped up in its own local affairs and subject to no control from outside, would not promote the common interests of the whole people.

Municipal home rule means in practice, therefore, that cities shall be free to frame their own charters and to determine for themselves their form of municipal government provided they do not infringe upon the general laws of the state or detract from the authority of the state officials. This is a very broad limitation and leaves the city a comparatively narrow field of self-determination. Nevertheless, in spite of this limitation the home rule system has substantial advantages. It relieves the legislature from having to do with a multitude of local matters at every session; it helps to separate municipal from state politics; and it encourages the people of the city to take an active interest in the making of their own charters.^[71]

The Organization of City Government.—Twenty-five years ago the general plan of city government, as established by these charters, was fairly uniform throughout the country. Charters were granted in different ways; their provisions varied in many details; but the main framework of city government which they set up had everywhere the same general features. This was the mayor-and-council type of government, its chief feature being a division of powers between the mayor, who performed executive functions, and the council, which served as a municipal legislature. In other words the cities were governed on the same principle as the nation and the states. Even today most of the larger cities retain this plan.

During the opening years of the twentieth century, however, a new plan of city government came to the front and spread with great rapidity through many sections of the country. This is known as the commission system of government. Instead of dividing powers between a mayor and council it combines them all in the hands of a small elective board. This plan of government now prevails in several hundred American cities, but most of them are small places.

Out of the commission plan has grown a third scheme of city government during the past few years. This is called the city manager plan. It gives to an elective commission or small council the general supervision of city affairs, but entrusts to a professional administrator, or city manager, the immediate charge of the actual work.

Let us look at these three types of city government a little more closely.

The Mayor-and-Council Plan.—Among the fifty largest cities of the United States, the mayor-and-council system of government exists in all but twelve. Despite the spread of the other two plans, therefore, it is still the prevailing type of government in the more important communities. |Position and powers of the mayor.| The mayor, under this system, is the city’s chief official. He is elected by the people, usually for a two-year or four-year term, and the election campaign is in most cities conducted on a party basis. Occasionally men of high ability have served as mayors in various cities, but far more frequently the position has gone to active politicians who can be relied upon to use the powers and patronage of the office in promoting the interests of the party.^[72] The authority of the mayor is in general like that exercised by the governor in state affairs. He makes appointments (which in some cases require confirmation by the council); and he may veto ordinances or resolutions passed by the council. In some cities he has the exclusive right to propose expenditures and in some others his assent is necessary in all municipal contracts. He represents the city on all occasions of ceremony and is the “first citizen” of the community. City charters usually provide that the mayor shall be responsible for the general observance of the laws and the maintenance of order. In a few cities he presides at meetings of the council but for the most part he does not have this duty. When he desires to address the council he does so by message or written communication.

The Heads of Departments.—It is impossible, of course, for any one official to manage directly all branches of city administration; hence the mayor is assisted in this work by various officials and boards, such as the superintendent of streets, the head of the police department, the water board, and the board of health. |Commissioners vs. boards.| In the larger cities the tendency now is to put each department of administration in charge of a single commissioner rather than a board because the members of a board are too prone to disagree among themselves and delay business. In the smaller cities the board system is still widely used, partly because it is less expensive. When a single official is given charge of a department (such as police, fire protection, or streets) he must devote his whole time to it and hence has to be paid a good salary; but members of a board can divide the work among themselves, each giving only part-time to it, and serving without any pay. It is questionable, however, if this policy means any saving in the long run. When a city attains a population of twenty, thirty, or forty thousand its administrative work grows to a point where it requires close and skilled attention in order to prevent extravagance and waste.

In behalf of the board system it is sometimes argued that it gives political parties a chance to be represented, whereas a single official represents the controlling party only. But there is no good reason why departments which have purely business functions to perform should be influenced by party considerations at all. The board system has some distinct advantages when applied to such departments as schools, public libraries, poor-relief, or city planning, where discussion and deliberation are desirable; but it does not work well in such departments as police, fire protection, and streets, for these are branches of work which demand quick decisions and firm action. There is no more reason for placing a board in charge of the city’s police than for putting a board of generals in command of an army.

The City Council.—The city council a generation ago was usually made up of two branches; today it is almost everywhere composed of one chamber only. A single chamber is quite enough for all that the council now has to do. |Election by wards and election at large.| Its members are elected, sometimes by wards, sometimes at large. The objection to the ward system is that itit encourages the election of inferior men and inspires them, when elected, to strive for the interests of their own particular wards rather than for the welfare of the city as a whole. When councilmen are elected at large, on the other hand, the dominant political party is likely to elect its entire slate and control the whole council, thus allowing the minority no representation at all. In some cities an endeavor has been made to meet these objections by having the council chosen in part under each plan, some councilmen from wards and some at large.^[73]

The council enacts the local laws or ordinances and appropriates whatever money is needed to carry on the city’s affairs. No expenditures can be made without its approval and its consent is almost always needed before municipal debts can be incurred. Its authority was large in earlier days when it controlled through its committees the management of the various city departments; but with the steady growth of the mayor’s authority the powers of the council have been diminished. It is a legislative body, and in city government there is relatively little legislative work to be done. The state laws cover almost everything of importance.

The chief defect of the mayor-and-council plan is its unwieldiness. There are too many separate authorities. Power and responsibility are scattered into too many hands. When things go wrong the council blames the mayor; the mayor blames the council; the voters do not know who is at fault. Time is wasted and money is misspent because independent authorities fail to agree. The political bosses take advantage of this situation to gain their own ends by helping one side or the other. The citizen who tries to find out the real facts has a hard time of it. It is like threading his way through a jungle. When he has a complaint to make he is often referred from one official to another until he loses patience. In the largest cities the mayor-and-council plan does not operate so badly, because the methods of conducting business are more definitely prescribed and the mayor is given so much power that he cannot well evade the responsibility. It is in the smaller communities that this plan of government obtains the least satisfactory results.

The Commission Plan.—Twenty-five years ago it seemed impossible to secure any substantial improvement in the administration of American cities. Foreign observers spoke of city government as a “conspicuous failure”, and there was a good deal of basis for that statement. People realized that city government had become cumbrous and top-heavy. They saw that the system of checks and balances, whatever its merits in state and national government, was not working well in the cities. Yet they had grown so accustomed to the complicated network of officials, boards, and councils that they hesitated to sweep the whole thing away in order to put some simple form of government in its place. So things drifted along until 1901, when the city of Galveston, driven to heroic measures as the result of a catastrophe, installed an entirely new scheme of government known as the commission plan.^[74] The success of this experiment was so marked that other cities became interested and followed Galveston’s example, until today the commission plan has been established in nearly four hundred municipalities, scattered all over the country.^[75]

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The commission plan is simplicity itself. The people elect a board or commission of five members. This commission has entire control of the city government in all its branches with the exception of schools, which are usually left in charge of a school board. They pass the ordinances, vote appropriations, make appointments, and award contracts. For purposes of actual management the city’s administrative work is divided into five general departments (public works, public welfare, public finance, public safety, and public health, or some other such division) and one of the commissioners takes immediate charge of each. The final authority in all matters, however, remains with the commission as a whole.

Its Merits and Defects.—The outstanding feature of this scheme is that it lodges all power and responsibility in one place. There is no division of authority, no checks and balances, no complicated network of officials, boards, councils, and committees. The commission meets every day; does its business publicly; takes full responsibility for its actions, and when it makes decisions sees that they are promptly carried out. The plan is so simple that any citizen can understand it. It is truly democratic in that the voters are enabled to enforce responsibility when taxes are too heavy or public funds are wasted. The commission plan tends to bring better men into office and affords them greater opportunities for the exercise of their abilities.

The objection is made that the commission plan, by giving so much authority to a few men, may prove to be dangerous and result in establishing an oligarchy. But the commissioners, like mayors and councils, are chosen by the people and cannot remain long in office unless the people re-elect them. Moreover, most cities that use the commission plan have established the initiative, referendum, and recall (see p. 107) as additional safeguards.

And so it is with the complaint that a commission of five members is not large enough to be representative of all classes among the people. Good representation is not merely a matter of numbers. Large bodies, in fact, can be easily handled by bosses. Congress with more than five hundred members has sometimes failed to reflect public opinion; the President on occasions has done this much better. Five men can find out what the people want just as well as fifty, and they are more likely to try. Quite as much to the point—they are in a better position to carry out the people’s wishes when the time comes.

There is one serious defect in the commission plan, however, and it is this: The control of the various city departments is not brought to a single center but is parceled out into five separate hands. Each commissioner looks after a certain portion of the city’s business; no one is supreme over them all. The commission as a whole is supreme, it is true, but it must trust its own individual members to handle their own branches of work. In other words, the commission plan establishes a five-headed executive; it leaves room for disagreements among the commissioners on a three-against-two basis, and does not make some one man responsible for getting a dollar’s worth of value for every hundred cents expended. Dividing the responsibility among five men is better, of course, than dividing it among fifty or sixty, as the mayor-and-council plan does; but putting it all upon the shoulders of one man is more effective still.

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The City-Manager Plan.—In keeping with the principle, therefore, that some one official ought to have direct charge of the city’s administrative work, the city-manager plan has been devised. Under this plan the commission (or a small elective council) continues in full control, but its members do not divide the various functions among themselves. Instead they appoint a well-paid, expert official to act as general manager and he takes charge of all the city departments. The city administration, under this arrangement, is conducted like that of any ordinary business corporation. The commission or council serves as a board of directors; the city manager becomes, as it were, a general superintendent.^[76] In selecting its manager a city often goes outside its own limits; usually it chooses a man who is an engineer by profession because so much of the work is of a technical nature. When the manager is appointed he plans the work to be done, estimates the cost, awards the contracts, purchases the materials, and hires the labor. The city-manager plan has been adopted by more than a hundred cities, but only a few are large communities.^[77]

This scheme of city government has all the advantages of the commission plan and some of its defects. The detailed work falls on the city manager who is qualified to do it. There is a single, responsible head of the administration. When a citizen has any complaint to make, he knows exactly where to go. In all these respects it is an ideal arrangement. |Two practical questions.| But there are two practical questions connected with the plan which only the future can answer. |1. Will the cities pay adequate salaries?| In the first place will cities be willing to pay the high salaries which they must pay in order to obtain the services of thoroughly competent managers? Men who are capable of handling the affairs of a great corporation, which a city is, cannot be secured without paying them the market price for their skill and experience. Private corporations pay high salaries to their general managers, and the cities, if they want the right men, must do likewise. But public opinion in most American cities is inclined to balk at high salaries. People who have to work hard for their own living do not see why anyone should get a salary of eight or ten thousand dollars a year from the city, and particularly they do not see why such a large salary should go to an outsider. In consequence many cities are striving to get good managers at low salaries, which is a very difficult if not an impossible thing to do. The sentiment which strongly favors appointing a “local man” as city manager is also likely to work harmfully. Local appointments in the long run are almost certain to be influenced by local politics.

A second limitation concerns the applicability of the city-manager plan to very large communities. A competent official can take charge of the entire administration in a place of fifty or one hundred thousand people. But how about a city of a million? Would the task be too big? This is a question which cannot yet be answered, because no very large city has yet tried the plan. It is pointed out that giant business enterprises, with operations extending into many countries, are sometimes managed by one capable man who ensures success by a careful selection of his subordinates. Until the experiment is made we are not safe in assuming that the city-manager scheme can be advantageously adopted by all communities of whatever size.

The Future of City Government.—What the final solution of the problem will be we cannot yet tell. The new plans of city government which have been described in the foregoing pages may be merely a prelude to something still newer. But at any rate the cities are making headway. They are simplifying their governments, making them more responsive to public opinion and better fitted to do the work which has to be done. American city government is no longer a conspicuous failure. Misgovernment and waste have not wholly or even largely disappeared, it is true; but conditions are far better today than they were twenty-five years ago. The people have awakened; they are no longer misled by promises and excuses but are insisting upon knowing the facts. The crooked methods of a generation ago would not be tolerated today. The present task is to hold what we have thus gained and add to it. That is a duty which belongs to every citizen whatever his age, occupation, or party allegiance. The world is becoming a world of cities, and he who helps to make his home city a better place is performing one of the highest duties of patriotism.

F. J. Goodnow and F. G. Bates, Municipal Government, pp. 3-43;

W. B. Munro, The Government of American Cities, pp. 80-101;

C. A. Beard, American Government and Politics, pp. 578-602; Ibid., Readings in American Government and Politics, pp. 509-534;

H. G. James, Local Government in the United States, pp. 300-357;

T. S. Chang, History and Analysis of the Commission and City Manager Plans of Municipal Government, pp. 75-96;

Henry Bruère, The New City Government, pp. 171-204;

American Academy of Political and Social Science, Commission Government and the City-Manager Plans, revised edition, pp. 49-77;

Everett Kimball, State and Municipal Government, pp. 345-453.

1. The charter of your own city (or some nearby city). Study the main types of city charter. Examine the procedure by which your city charter was adopted; make a summary of its chief provisions; compare these with the main provisions in the charter of some other comparable city; point out what seem to be the chief merits and defects; state your conclusions as to desirable changes, and explain how these may be secured. References: Nathan Matthews, Municipal Charters, pp. 97-163; H. G. James, Applied City Government, pp. 39-53; H. A. Toulmin, The City Manager, pp. 170-193; National Municipal League, Municipal Program (ed. C. R. Woodruff), passim. (Copies of the city charter can always be found in the public library and in all but the larger cities may usually be had from the office of the city clerk.)

2. The city-manager plan: what are its merits and its limitations? References: H. A. Toulmin, The City Manager, pp. 73-97; C. E. Rightor, The City Manager in Dayton, pp. 31-56; E. C. Mabie, Selected Articles on the City Manager Plan of Municipal Government, passim (Debaters’ Handbook series); T. S. Chang, History and Analysis of the Commission and City Manager Plans of Municipal Government, pp. 158-220; National Municipal League, The Story of the City Manager Plan (pamphlet); The Year Book of the City Managers’ Association and the National Municipal Review also contain recent material.

1. Characteristics of city populations. W. B. Munro, The Government of American Cities, pp. 29-52.

2. The city and the state. C. A. Beard, American City Government, pp. 31-51.

3. The city charter. H. G. James, Local Government in the United States, pp. 304-311.

4. The position and powers of the mayor. W. B. Munro, The Government of American Cities, pp. 207-237; R. M. Story, The American Municipal Executive, passim.

5. The mayor as a human being. Brand Whitlock, Forty Years of It, especially pp. 205-236.

6. The most striking mayor of his day. Tom L. Johnson, My Story, pp. 108-143; Carl Lorenz, Tom L. Johnson, pp. 21-66.

7. The city council. F. J. Goodnow and F. G. Bates, Municipal Government, pp. 179-229.

8. Parties and politics in city government. W. B. Munro, The Government of American Cities, pp. 153-179.

9. The selection and training of city administrators. Henry Bruère, The New City Government, pp. 335-361.

10. How our cities have improved during the past twenty years. W. B. Munro, Principles and Methods of Municipal Administration, pp. 1-29.