the case of a young man who, in order to secure a home for his quickly growing family, buys a house under a heavy mortgage.  Twice a year there comes in a great bill for interest, and in order to meet it he must economize in his table or now and then deny himself a new suit of clothes.  So if a city has to tax heavily to pay its debts, it must cut down its current expenses somewhere, and the results are sure to be visible in more or less untidiness and inefficiency.  Mr. Low tells us that “very few of our American cities have yet paid in full the cost of their original water-works.”  Lastly, much wastefulness results from want of foresight.  It is not easy to predict how a city will grow, or the nature of its needs a few years hence.  Moreover, even when it is easy enough to predict a result, it is not easy to secure practical foresight on the part of a city council elected for the current year.  Its members are afraid of making taxes too heavy this year, and considerations of ten years hence are apt to be dismissed as “visionary.”  It is always hard for us to realize how terribly soon ten years hence will be here.  The habit of doing things by halves has been often commented on (and, perhaps, even more by our own writers than by foreigners) as especially noticeable in America.  It has doubtless been fostered by the conditions which in so many cases have made it absolutely necessary to adopt temporary makeshifts.  These conditions have produced a certain habit of mind.

[Footnote 10:  This and some of the following considerations have been ably set forth and illustrated by Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia College, and lately mayor of Brooklyn, in an address at Johns Hopkins University, published in J.  H. U. Studies, Supplementary Notes, no. 4.]

[Sidenote:  Growth in complexity of government in cities.] Let us now observe that as cities increase in size the amount of government that is necessary tends in some respects to increase.  Wherever there is a crowd there is likely to be some need of rules and regulations.  In the country a man may build his house pretty much as he pleases; but in the city he may be forbidden to build it of wood, and perhaps even the thickness of the party walls or the position of the chimneys may come in for some supervision on the part of the government.  For further precaution against spreading fires, the city has an organized force of men, with costly engines, engine-houses, and stables.  In the country a board of health has comparatively little to do; in the city it is often confronted with difficult sanitary problems which call for highly paid professional skill on the part of physicians and chemists, architects and plumbers, masons and engineers.  So, too, the water supply of a great city is likely to be a complicated business, and the police force may well need as much, management as a small army.  In short, with a city, increase in size is sure to involve increase in complexity of organization, and this means a vast increase in the number of officials for doing the work and of details to be superintended.  For example, let us enumerate the executive department and officers of the city of Boston at the present time.