5 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to discharge the duties of the offices to which they aspire, receive next 

 to no consideration, and in the end the success of party candidates is 

 esteemed a fitting occasion for congratulations and rejoicing, even when 

 the effect is to displace efficient officers by those who are inefficient. 



The elimination of partisan politics from municipal affairs would 

 be an important and a significant reform. To the place-hunters and 

 spoilsmen of politics it would be an official " notice to quit," and it 

 would mean that the municipal constituency had determined that the 

 administration of city affairs should be conducted on business princi- 

 ples. It would help to make it practicable to secure and retain good 

 men in the public service. 



It is not often that those gentlemen, whose services either in the 

 Council or in the executive departments of the city government are 

 most to be desired, will undertake to secure a nomination and election 

 through the use of the regular party machinery. The prerequisite 

 manipulation, and the self-abasement and humiliation, which generally 

 attend a successful candidature, demand more patriotism and self- 

 sacrifice than even good men ordinarily possess. It is difficult to see 

 why any man who ought to be elected should so earnestly desire the 

 position of councilman or alderman in the city government as to be 

 willing to pay for it what it costs in time, money, and self-respect 

 when it comes to him as the result of a political party nomination. 



When obtained, it only offers an opportunity for appropriating to 

 the public interests a large amount of time and gratuitous service. Its 

 only compensation must be that which comes from a sense of having 

 faithfully and honestly discharged a duty. This is hardly sufficiently 

 inspiring to attract the best men to the public service. 



Mr. Shorey, in the pamphlet already referred to, in discussing 

 another topic, says : " An instance will illustrate what I mean : Last 

 spring an educated gentleman in the First Ward had faithfully served 

 the public interests in the City Council for six years'. He was not at 

 all anxious to continue in the public service, and very properly refused 

 to make any personal exertion to secure a renomination. The business 

 men of that ward, in which there is probably two hundred million dol- 

 lars' worth of property, paid little or no attention to the matter, and 

 the result was the loss of an excellent representative of the character 

 and intelligence of the city in the Council." 



This is a case directly apposite to my argument. The successor 

 to the councilman, whose loss to the Council Mr. Shorey deprecates, 

 was the proprietor of a miserable groggery, who secured the party 

 nomination. 



Experience in former discussions leads me to anticipate here an 

 objection which may be formulated thus: "Admitting all that you 

 urge as to the evils of party politics in municipal affairs, and also as 

 to the desirability of such a divorce as you suggest, there still remains 

 the fact that they can not be separated." 



