2 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Still it is eminently important to the success of the new system that 

 the nature of the commissioner's function as head of one of the city's 

 administrative divisions should be clearly defined and understood. 

 This necessity results from the experience of American cities with the 

 problem of administration. The method, prevalent in every American 

 state, of selecting municipal administrative and technical officials by 

 popular vote, has been a stumbling block in the path of our unfortunate 

 cities. The most vicious legacy which Jacksonian Democracy be- 

 queathed to American politics, profoundly influencing the political 

 ideas and methods of our people during the first half of the last cen- 

 tury, was the belief that the selection of administrative officials by ap- 

 pointment and for a permanent tenure meant the growth of a class of 

 office-holding bureaucrats, and that the democratic doctrine of equal op- 

 portunity demanded that all should have a turn or a chance of public 

 office. This then novel application of the democratic principle, exem- 

 plified in the federal service by the spoils system, led, in the state and lo- 

 cal governments, to the popular election for short terms of purely ad- 

 ministrative officials. It is a curious fact that the state governments, 

 which imitated the federal system in most respects, have always de- 

 parted from it in one of its most important features — the centraliza- 

 tion of the administrative service in the hands of the chief executive. 



In application this principle did not lead to the expected results. 

 Experience proved that to exercise intelligence and discrimination in 

 the selection of numerous officials was beyond the power of the voters ; 

 especially was a wise selection of expert administrative officials im- 

 practicable in view of the natural inability of the ordinary voter to 

 judge of the technical qualifications of the different candidates for the 

 place. The logical result followed: the voter, in his confusion and 

 helplessness, came to depend upon the party organization, which now 

 assumed the selective function supposed to be exercised by the voters — 

 an excellent illustration of the soundness of the political maxim that 

 a system of government which gives to the voters a power which they 

 are not able to exercise takes from them that power. Popular selection 

 meant party selection in such a case, and party selection was based 

 upon considerations of availability, not of efficiency. The best candidate 

 for the office requiring technical skill and training was, from the point 

 of view of the politicians, not the man whose experience fitted him for 

 the place, but the party worker whose usefulness to the " Organization " 

 might be conveniently recognized and retained by giving him the office. 

 Essentially, the failure of the Jacksonian political builders in thus 

 modifying the earlier political system was a failure to distinguish be- 

 tween political functions and functions of a purely administrative or 

 technical nature : in its willingness to sacrifice efficiency to democracy, 



