6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT NOW AND A HUNDRED 



YEARS AGO. 



By CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF. 



A HUNDRED years has wrought marvelous changes. The maps 

 of Asia, Europe and America, of the world, have been changed. 

 The United States of America has fought four wars and demonstrated 

 her prowess on sea and land, at home and abroad. The country has 

 grown from a handful of States strung along the Atlantic seaboard to 

 a great and powerful nation, extending from sea to sea, conquering 

 and subduing in its growth a mighty continent — the mightiest in its 

 latent possibilities on the face of the globe. Commerce and industry 

 and transportation have grown with equal, if not greater, strides, and 

 the time is not far distant, if it has not already arrived, when America 

 will dominate the world along these lines. 



Our development thus far has been extensive; during the coming 

 century it will be intensive. A few more decades and the partition 

 of the globe among the world powers will be practically completed; 

 then we shall be compelled to cultivate with closer attention and greater 

 zeal and more care our resources. Intensive culture will succeed ex- 

 tensive cultivation. The great mechanical inventions of the nine- 

 teenth century have directly aided the extensive movement — the steam 

 railway, the steamship, the telegraph, the cable, the telephone; the 

 inventions of the next century will as directly aid the intensive move- 

 ment — they will be designed to make the most of what we have. 



Our political problems have also been problems of extension. First, 

 the government and division of the Northwest Territory; then the 

 acquisition and organization of the Louisiana Territory; of Florida; of 

 Texas; of the Southwest Territory; of the Oregon country and Cali- 

 fornia; then the settlement of the great question as to whether the 

 country should be divided, and its reconstruction on the principle that 

 it was one and indivisible; and latterly, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the 

 Philippines. The political problems of the twentieth century will deal 

 with questions of internal development and improvement. The gov- 

 ernment control, ownership and operation of the great natural monop- 

 olies, civil service and constitutional reforms will occupy the time and 

 attention of our statesmen. 



Our municipal growth and development during the past hundred 

 years has likewise been along the lines of extension. Our cities have 

 grown in numbers, population and territory. The figures are so 



