MISGOVERNMENT OF GREAT CITIES. 301 



to discharge the duties thus devolved upon them. They are selected 

 because they are Republicans or Democrats or Mugwumps. Perhaps 

 they are politicians, and must be paid for services rendered. It may 

 be that they have influential friends who desire to provide for them 

 in the public service, or for some equally insufficient reason they are 

 placed in charge of interests for the care of which they are utterly 

 incompetent. 



A private enterprise conducted on this plan would soon come to 

 a most disastrous result, and every intelligent man would declare that 

 such a result was deserved and inevitable. But seldom is this rule 

 applied in passing judgment on public affairs. There seems to be a 

 kind of undefined belief that public interests can be cared for by 

 almost any persons, or that they can for the most part care for them- 

 selves, or that they are in some inscrutable way under the care of 

 that Providence which is said to protect the lives and persons of idiots 

 and inebriates. "When the plundering of the public revenue is discov- 

 ered, when the ballot-boxes are stuffed or stolen, and when by official 

 incompetency or rascality the public safety or the public health is 

 jeopardized, men shake their heads ominously, give a passing moment 

 to reflections on the depraved state of municipal affairs, indulge in a 

 few evil predictions, and pass on to their banks, their factories, or their 

 merchandise, leaving these affairs to drift on to a destruction concern- 

 ing which the only question is as to whether the denodment is more 

 or less remote. Then, when the disaster or evil is upon them, and the 

 effort to provide a remedy can no longer be postponed, relief is sought 

 from some additional legislation or to some new device of adminis- 

 tration, rather than by a resort to the simple and common-sense plan of 

 putting municipal affairs in the hands of skilled and honest adminis- 

 trators. As to the methods of securing such officers, I shall have 

 something to say farther on. In the administrations of city govern- 

 ments we find misgovernment manifesting itself in so many forms 

 that it would be impracticable to make note of all its phases. Nor 

 would such an effort prove interesting, even if perhaps it might be 

 instructive. 



To those pronounced and flagrant forms of misgovernment which 

 arrest the attention of even the casual observer, I shall not at this time 

 allude, except as I may suggest some method of correction. It will be 

 well, however, to refer to some less obtrusive instances which may 

 not always be suggested to us in our examinations. And first, let us 

 note the liability to mistake in connection with our public charities. 

 The sentiment which pervades every rank and condition of society, 

 demanding that relief be given to the suffering and that the wants of 

 the needy be supplied, is creditable to humanity. It has, too, most 

 abundant opportunities for exercise. No proposition has been more 

 fully confirmed by the experience of mankind than that " the poor ye 

 have always with you." In many of our municipalities the charge for 



