228 Bruncken—Use of Parties in Municipal Government. 
gent though they may sometimes be, if he displays alacrity in 
assisting them in the transaction of their business; in fine, if 
they carry away with them an agreeable personal impression, 
it will require a great deal of evidence to convince them that a 
man who has treated them so pleasantly is not a good officer 
who ought to be re-elected. Now it is certainly highly desir¬ 
able that a public official should be courteous and obliging in 
dealing with the public; yet this is but one of the many qual¬ 
ities he should possess, and not the most important one of 
them. Many an incompetent and even corrupt official has en¬ 
joyed great popularity because of his pleasant manners, while 
not a few faithful, competent men, whose services were of the 
highest value to the community, have lost their places merely 
because they lacked the faculty of pleasing the public in this 
respect. 
Finally there is a third class, which comprises the great ma¬ 
jority of citizens, who never come into contact with municipal 
officials unless it be the tax assessor. They have not even the 
minimum of personal experience enjoyed by the second class to 
help them in arriving at a sound opinion of an officer’s qualifi¬ 
cations, How shall they be guided ? Some of them may be in¬ 
fluenced by the views of the members of the first two classes. 
But the great majority are absolutely dependent on the news¬ 
papers for their information. 
Now it is a fact that many departments of a city government 
but rarely furnish “news” for the papers; and when, once in a 
while, they do have a matter which in the opinion of the report¬ 
ers is important enough to be published, it is of such a charac¬ 
ter that it does not help anybody in forming an opinion on the 
conduct of the business of the office. Other departments are 
more prolific of “ news, ” but even in them the amount of work 
about which anything is published is infinitesimal as compared 
with the amount of work actually performed. Nor is the mat¬ 
ter which is published always of greater importance than that 
regarding which the newspapers are silent, except from the 
standpoint of the reporter who wants to write a readable story. 
That which is printed, from the unavoidable imperfections in 
the methods of obtaining information by newspaper men, 
