RELATION^ OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 427 



of the burgomaster and of the other chief functionaries, at those 

 rare times when vacancies occur, devolves upon the elected council, 

 which also has general budgetary power and cooperates with the 

 magistrates' council in matters of municipal policy. 



The permanence of the municipal service makes it possible to 

 carry on with patience and unbroken effect every sort of public im- 

 provement and also renders it comparatively easy to imbue German 

 municipal administration with the spirit of scientific progress. 

 Thus, while from the point of view of French, British, or American 

 democracy, German municipal government is unpopular and reac- 

 tionary, it is, nevertheless, in the very forefront of progress as 

 respects the application of scientific knowledge to the public serv- 

 ices. It is a municipal government whose standards are prescribed 

 by the bacteriologist, the electrical and civil engineer, the sociologist, 

 the financial and legal expert, the trained architect, the botanist, 

 and the man of technical equipment in a hundred different directions. 



It is at least open to question whether or not a community may 

 not be regarded as governing itself as truly where its civil service 

 is perfectly organized and dominated by scientific and humane ideas, 

 though its electorate be restricted and non-democratic, as a com- 

 munity which, like those of the United States, throws its electorate 

 open without conditions even to the vagrant, but which denies itself 

 the benefit of a thoroughly efficient and highly enlightened civil 

 service. 



The United States is the only country which has not worked out 

 for itself a fairly uniform system of municipal government. There 

 are in this country to-day more varieties, not merely in the details 

 of organization, but in the fundamental features of the framework 

 of municipal government, than in all the countries of Europe taken 

 together, from Scotland to Bulgaria and Greece. 



I cannot deny the opinion that it has been unfortunate for the 

 best development of civilized life in American cities that there had 

 not been devised before the middle of the nineteenth century some 

 simple standard system of organization for American municipal 

 corporations. Along with many advantages, our federal system 

 has had some grave disadvantages. To that system undoubtedly 

 must be attributed many of our difficulties in dealing with the city 

 problem, and especially those difficulties that arise from defective 

 legislation. 



Our cities are scattered through a large number of states and 

 derive their forms of administration and their various powers from 

 as many legislatures. Some of the states have worked out uniform 

 systems, while others have followed the practice of granting individ- 

 ual charters to each incorporated town or city. Almost every city 

 in the country can show an experience of charter change, revision, 



