278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ing body of the powers already possessed by the municipality, and 

 hitherto exercised by a large number of officials. The distinction which 

 attaches to the commissioner's office, together with the consciousness 

 that due credit for individual achievement will not be divided among 

 a number of officials, gives to the position an attractiveness which is all 

 the more effective because allegiance to the ward machine is not neces- 

 sary to obtain it. "I should never have presented myself as a candi- 

 date for city office under the old government with its divided powers 

 and doubtful honors," declared one of the commissioners of a New 

 England city to the writer. Such men are not anxious to hold office 

 where positive achievement is so difficult and credit for whatever is ac- 

 complished goes to nobody in particular. 



It must not be inferred from what has been said that the popular 

 political leader has been eliminated from municipal government under 

 the commission plan. This mistaken inference has been the ground for 

 much faulty reasoning about the new system, and has probably done 

 more than anything else to obscure the real issue in the movement for 

 commission government. Thus honest political leaders and their fol- 

 lowers are frequently prejudiced against the new system because of 

 their belief that its object is to banish the popular leader from munici- 

 pal politics and to substitute for him the so-called "high brow," or 

 "silk stocking," type. Government by real representatives of the 

 people is to be superseded by government by the "intellectual" mem- 

 bers of the community. The same opinion is reflected in comments 

 upon those commission government elections in which a popular polit- 

 ical leader or ex-official has been successful ; the result in nine cases out 

 of ten is regarded as a "reaction," a sign of the decay of a hitherto 

 promising new system. 



It can not be too emphatically stated that the assumption of those 

 who believe that commission government means the elimination of the 

 popular political leader is as mistaken as their fears are groundless. 

 Everywhere the elections in commission-governed cities bear testimony 

 to the fact that the political leader will be elected under a system of 

 universal suffrage regardless of the form of government. The most 

 widely known and most successful of the new governments have been 

 in charge of men of this type. Thus the people of Des Moines, in the 

 first election held under the new charter, rejected the slate of the re- 

 form element which had been back of the charter movement, and placed 

 the new government in charge of popular leaders who had been op- 

 posed to the new system. The people of Houston in the last election, 

 placed on the commission two popular politicians. A majority of the 

 members of the Haverhill commission are political leaders who have 

 served under the old government in that city. These cases are suffi- 



