The long “bed-quilt” ballot of county officers, as a Chicago newspaperman called it, at first innocently, and then maliciously, deceived, misled and disfranchised the “average citizen.” As to the manner in which this result was brought about, more hereafter.

But aside from all that, the long ballot principle turned out to be the father of irresponsible organization. Each elective officer received his commission straight from the people; his accountability was solely and directly to them. No officer was to be entrusted with much power for the fear that he might emulate King George and enslave the county. Government generally was regarded as a natural but more or less necessary enemy of the people to be tied with a short rope lest it break loose and do incalculable damage.

To the devotees of this theory, the idea that the county should have a directing executive head, if indeed it ever received consideration, was apparently too suggestive of Hanoverian monarchy to be seriously entertained. This was to be a “government of laws, not of men”—the people would see that all went well.

It was such a spirit, no doubt, that guided the development of the county system in an eastern state, which the writer studied a few years ago. In the course of this effort the interrelations of officers in a typical unit were diagrammed—with the result shown in frontispiece. It was found, for instance, that the county clerk who was “directly responsible to the people” was given duties to perform under some twenty different laws, the enforcement of which under the constitution was charged upon the governor as the chief executive of the state. In fulfillment of these obligations he was found to be under the direction, among others, of the superintendent of banking, the superintendent of insurance, the commissioner of excise and the secretary of state. For the routine of his office he was answerable to the local board of supervisors. The sheriff, who “took his orders from the people,” was found to be answerable to the supervisors, the surrogate and the county judge. The district attorney was put down as subject to at least three minor state officers besides the governor and the board of supervisors. The county treasurer looked up (or was supposed to) to the state commissioner of excise, the state board of tax commissioners, the commissioner of education, the comptroller and the state treasurer.

And in all this wilderness of conflicting responsibility there was, be it reiterated, no single officer who could be called the executive. The governor, it is true, had power to remove and fill vacancies, but even this negative control was conditioned by the fact that there were sixty-one counties in the state, that some of them were hundreds of miles from the capital and that the governor was charged with a thousand other responsibilities besides looking after the counties. It was true that the state comptroller was given power to examine into the fiscal affairs of the various counties, but this safeguard was of limited value in practice, owing to the small number of examiners which the legislature provides.

No, the ingenious Anglo-Saxon mind had discovered a substitute for efficient personal supervision! If a given officer were to go wrong or neglect his duties, then the supervisors were authorized to go to the district attorney and persuade him, if possible, to take action on the officer’s bond or to institute a criminal prosecution. If the district attorney was negligent in the matter, the supervisors might go to the governor with charges of neglect of duty. But if the original officer in question was just lazy, slow or inefficient, then everybody simply could wait “till he got round” to doing his duty.

To this day this circumambulation in the name of democracy actually fulfills the conception of popular rule for no inconsiderable body of political leaders. Where the system goes wrong, they inject a little more confusion, a little more irresponsibility into the plan of government. Take, for instance, the Indiana system. In 1898 the county government became the subject of a state-wide scandal and was made the political issue of the year. The governor in his biennial message followed the good old American custom: more complications, more division of responsibility. He recommended a system of “safeguards” which had the effect of taking away power (and responsibility) from the county board (commissioners) and vesting it in a brand-new body known as the council, composed of seven members, three elected from the county at large, and one from each of the four councilmanic districts. This council was made the tax-levying and money-appropriating body for the county and no money could henceforth be drawn from the county treasury except upon their appropriation. It also was given the sole authority to issue bonds and borrow money. And so the county governments in Indiana were blocked at just one more point and the county commissioners were made just one shade less accountable than they were before the enactment of this ingenious piece of “reform” legislation.

Two of the New England states developed equally clever methods of breaking down financial responsibility. New Hampshire, with its boards of commissioners elected by the people of the counties would seem to be well-equipped with fiscal agencies. But not so! The commissioners may only recommend appropriations for county expenses—and a “convention,” consisting of the members of the House of Representatives of the various towns then allows, or disallows, them. Such an institution was created many years ago. Connecticut goes New Hampshire one better by constituting the convention of the local members of both houses of the legislature. The convention may not only vote the amount of the general county appropriation, but the appropriation for any specific items of county expenditures for the two fiscal years following, or for the repairs and alterations of county buildings.

Democracy via complication was applied also in the state of New Jersey, when the legislature of 1898 took from the board of chosen freeholders (supervisors) of Hudson County the control over the Hudson County Boulevard. An act passed in that year created a separate new commission of three members to be elected by the people, upon which was conferred powers comparable to those of a separate municipality. The commission was even given the right to maintain a separate police force, to own and operate a separate electric lighting plant, to employ its own cleaning and repairing force and to act in other ways entirely separate from the county road and highway system and independent of the street departments of those municipalities through which the road lies. This independent body was authorized to fix its own appropriations and make them mandatory upon the board of chosen freeholders, to let all contracts for the construction of the roads under its charge and to employ a separate engineer.

When Hudson County began to lay out its park system, the disintegration of the county system was carried a step further. Another wing was added to the amorphous county structure, a Park Commission to be composed of four members. These were not to be elected like the Boulevard commissioners, or appointed by an executive, as is done in most cities, or chosen by the board of chosen freeholders, but appointed by the Judge of the Court of Common Pleas! This commission also became a separate corporation, like the Boulevard Commission, and now has power to requisition appropriations on the board of chosen freeholders.

But the end of the tale is not yet. In 1912, Hudson County undertook the extermination of mosquitoes. Another independent board! More independent mandatory powers of appropriation! And the appointment of six members in this instance was vested in the Judge of the Supreme Court. Add to this layout a board of elections, appointed by the governor, on the nomination of the chairmen of the two leading political parties, and you have the county jungle in all its primeval grandeur.

The people of New Jersey were thoroughly consistent in 1900 when their legislature broke with precedent and undertook to supply their counties of the first class with some sort of a head by creating the office of county supervisor. The governing boards of these counties were at that time composed of representatives from various municipalities. So it was decided, in order to give the whole people a voice in the government, to have the new officer elected at large. The legislature had no notion of giving anyone any new power. They proposed to further subdivide existing power. True, the law under which this new office was created, designates the supervisor as the chief executive. But, as has so often been the case in city charters, this designation proved to be only a fiction. The law gave the supervisor the right to remove subordinates, but no instrumentality with which to investigate the conduct of hundreds of county officers and employees and thus to make his authority effective. Moreover, he was crippled by the fact that the board of freeholders might reverse his decisions and reinstate the officers or employees suspended. But what is of more importance, the supervisor was given no power of original appointment.

Similarly, Cook County, Ill., acquired a president of the board of county commissioners, who is elected by the people. Kings County, N. Y., before consolidation with New York City, had a supervisor-at-large. But neither of these dignitaries has or had any powers of appointment comparable to, let us say, those of the mayor of Cleveland or of New York. In the general run of counties, the executive is not a single officer but the governing board itself. Where the “town plan” is in vogue, as in certain Illinois counties, and throughout New York State, this body may be very large and unwieldy and is wholly incapable of supervising administrative detail, except through small committees, with the added division of responsibility which that implies.

And so, county government everywhere was conceived in a spirit of negation. The people elect their boards of supervisors or county commissioners, hoping thereby to keep their fingers on the public purse through direct agents. The supervisors, in their turn, undertake to regulate the finances of the sheriff, the district attorney, the county clerk and the rest. But, lo, these officers are no subordinates of theirs; they are the people’s humble servants. The supervisors may set out upon a program of economy and efficiency, including, let us say, the standardization of supplies. But the county clerk may not recognize their superior authority, preferring to run his office, to suit his personal convenience; and if the supervisors undertake to check him he may find some way of appealing to the people. The superintendent of the poor, the treasurer and the auditor may likewise go their respective paces in defiance of all superior authority. If in the course of their official routine these officers collect sundry fees, they may account for them or not, as they please, so far as the governing body is concerned. They may be reached by some slow process of litigation, but never in the direct summary way that is employed in private business. It is a fatally ineffectual procedure. And when a dozen or nineteen officers, chosen by popular election, are thrown together, it is clear that every one of them is the legal peer of every other, since everyone acknowledges a common superior. And since the people are a rather too unwieldy body to look after the details of county business, each officer must be a law unto himself. And it is perhaps just as well that none of them has been designated as an official chief, since the facts of organization would refute and nullify any such arrangement.

It is as though a board of directors were charged with the control of a private enterprise, but were expressly denied the power to select the manager and heads of departments to whom they might delegate their authority over details.