COMMISSION GOVERNMENT 279 



ciently typical. Commission government has drawn its elective officials 

 from the class of sympathetic political leadership as well as from the 

 "reform" or "intellectual" elements of the community. It would 

 perhaps be accurate to say that the new system has generally meant a 

 higher grade of politicians in the public service. " All this goes to 

 show/' writes a Houston citizen, "that such a thing as lifting munici- 

 pal government from the level of politics is an iridescent dream." Per- 

 haps it is best that this should be so; if commission government can 

 make the popular leader a careful, responsible supervisor of the city's 

 business, it will do what the aldermanic system has never succeeded in 

 doing. 



The logical result of the persistence of this political habit of the 

 people to elect the popular political leader to public office has been 

 usually the intrusting of the commission governments to men of sound 

 but ordinary ability. Here again we encounter the mistaken impres- 

 sion which has had wide currency among those interested in the new 

 form of government, that the commission governments have been run 

 by men of extraordinary personal powers, by experts in administration. 

 A review of the personnel of the new governments does not reveal the 

 grounds for this assumption. Even the commissions which have had 

 the greatest success in administration — for example, Galveston, Hous- 

 ton, Des Moines, Cedar Eapids and Haverhill — have not been made up 

 of men of unusual attainments. 



An appreciation of the deep-rooted tendency of our voters to place 

 their cities in charge of men of ordinary ability has led some practical 

 students of the question to assert that the commission plan is fore- 

 ordained to failure because it provides for the popular election of the 

 city's administrative department heads. " The rock upon which Amer- 

 ican cities have split is the popular election of administrative officials," 

 a critic observes. The objection touches on the vital problem of the 

 commission government — what the exact function of the elected com- 

 missioner should be. But, in the present stage of the development of 

 commission government, it is not possible accurately to designate the 

 commissioner's function as uniformly supervisory or administrative. 

 In some cities he is in effect an active superintendent devoting his en- 

 tire time to the details of his department; in the majority of cases, 

 however, he acts in a supervisory rather than administrative capacity, 

 and the actual work of the department is carried on by subordinate 

 officials of technical training and experience. The varying charter 

 provisions, some requiring the commissioner to devote all of his time 

 to the work of his office, and others permitting him to devote but a part 

 of his time, show plainly that the real nature of the commissioner's 

 function is not yet clear even in the minds of the proponents of the 

 new system. 



