430 MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 



Upon municipal corporations in general, it may be said that the 

 state has devolved not merely the ordinary protection of life and 

 property with which the police department is charged, and such 

 special forms of protection as are illustrated in the fire departments, 

 but also the newer forms of service that relate to the protection of 

 the public health, the older sort of regulation that relates to the pre- 

 servation of public morals, and the local enforcement of a variety of 

 general statutes. For all these purposes the municipality is in 

 fact the local agent of the state. There is nothing new in the legal 

 or theoretical nature of any of these functions, but there is a vast 

 deal that is new in the manner in which the functions are exercised. 



Thus the enormous development of public lighting grows out of 

 the primitive function of the night watchman. The modern devel- 

 opment of water-supply is essentially a health protective service. 

 The same thing may be said of the sewer system, the cleansing of 

 the streets, and the removal and disposal of garbage and waste. 

 All these are public functions in the highest sense. In the opinion 

 of most municipal authorities, the question whether or not street- 

 illumination, water-supply, sewers and drainage, street-cleaning, 

 and garbage removal should be exercised as public or as private 

 functions is no longer open to discussion. None of these services 

 can be properly rendered for private profit. They relate too essen- 

 tially to the public welfare. Fortunately, in all these matters, 

 modern municipal life is making an unexpectedly rapid and fortunate 

 progress, with results that are shown directly in the reduction of 

 death-rates, and indirectly in a score of other ways. 



Forty or fifty years ago, as I have already said, epidemics were 

 frequent in most cities of Europe and America. Now they are of 

 rare occurrence. The cholera, at Hamburg, eleven years ago, re- 

 sulted in making German municipal government more than ever a 

 matter for the bacteriologist and the high sanitary and engineering 

 authorities. The best American cities are advancing to these German 

 and British standards. 



Nothing else has such far-reaching importance in the more recent 

 life of cities in Great Britain and Europe, and even more obviously 

 in America, as the physical changes due to electric transit and the 

 upbuilding of suburban zones. Within the past ten years the ex- 

 tent of electric street railways in America has increased many-fold. 

 This movement is doing a hundred times more to relieve the con- 

 gestion of population in cities and to make possible an effectual 

 dealing with the evils of overcrowding than has been accomplished 

 by the direct application of remedies to slum conditions. 



Fifteen or twenty years ago the word " slum " was of constant 

 recurrence in any discussion of the problems of municipal life. 

 Every city, even the small ones, had its area of overcrowding, of 



