HOME RULE 395 



sistent with the general laws of the state. In this way is created an 

 unmolested sphere of local self-government in which the city may 

 exercise all powers necessary to its own complete development, without 

 the necessity of recourse to any outside authority and without the 

 danger of interference from any outside authority. Municipal home 

 rule means further that the city may determine its own form of govern- 

 ment, or as Herbert Bigelow put it, "may cut out its own municipal 

 suit of clothes." Thus the city decides for itself, by means of a charter 

 convention and ratification election, whether it will have the commis- 

 sion plan, the city manager plan, the mayor-and-council system or any 

 other form of municipal organization. 



And why not? Who know better than the citizens of Indianapolis 

 the needs of Indianapolis and the administrative agencies that are 

 adapted to those needs ? Who can determine better than the citizens of 

 Lexington, Kentucky, the activities of public welfare in which the 

 government of Lexington should engage? If Terre Haute, Indiana, 

 wants a non-partisan form of city government why should not Terre 

 Haute have that form? There appears to be no reason for excepting 

 cities from the operation of the principle of self-government that does 

 not apply with equal force against the principle of democracy itself. 



Ours are the only English-speaking cities in the world that are denied 

 the right of self-government. One can not imagine, for example, legis- 

 lative intermeddling in the affairs of an English city, which is per- 

 mitted by Parliament to develop in its own way and according to its 

 own ideas of administrative organization. English cities since 1832 

 have been among the best governed in the world and American cities 

 have been among the worst governed. What accounts for this difference 

 between the municipal experience of two English-speaking peoples ? The 

 main reason is that English cities are self-governed and American cities 

 are state-governed. The citizens of Birmingham govern Birmingham; 

 the legislature of Indiana governs Indianapolis. 



Home rule for cities means municipal self-government, but it does 

 not mean municipal independence in the sense that there are created 

 independent sovereignties within the state. It does not mean that the 

 state government loses its control over matters that concern the general 

 state welfare. Thus home rule does not require that the state surrender 

 entirely its control over elections in which state officers are chosen, for 

 the people of the commonwealth as a whole are vitally interested in 

 maintaining the purity of the ballot and in the prevention of corrupt 

 and fradulent practices. It does not mean that the state resigns its 

 power to pass laws relative to the health, safety and general welfare of 

 its citizens. The state at large is vitally interested in the prevention 

 of crime and disease and in the education of the people, and, although 

 it may leave the city free to provide its own administrative machinery 



