Amid the general dissatisfaction over the extravagance and inefficiency of our city governments, people’s attention was first drawn to the rapid and alarming increase of city indebtedness in various parts of the country.  A heavy debt may ruin a city as surely as an individual, for it raises the rate of taxation, and thus, as was above pointed out, it tends to frighten people and capital away from the city.  At first it was sought to curb the recklessness of city councils in incurring lavish expenditures by giving the mayor a veto power.  Laws were also passed limiting the amount of debt which a city would be allowed to incur under any circumstances.  Clothing the mayor with the veto power is now seen to have been a wise step; and arbitrary limitation of the amount of debt, though a clumsy expedient, is confessedly a necessary one.  But beyond this, it was in some instances attempted to take the management of some departments of city business out of the hands of the city and put them into the hands of the state legislature.  The most notable instance of this was in New York in 1857.  The results, there and elsewhere, have been generally regarded as unsatisfactory.  After a trial of thirty years the experience of New York has proved that a state legislature is not competent to take proper care of the government of cities.  Its members do not know enough about the details of each locality, and consequently local affairs are left to the representatives from each locality, with “log-rolling” as the inevitable result.  A man fresh from his farm on the edge of the Adirondacks knows nothing about the problems pertaining to electric wires in Broadway, or to rapid transit between Harlem and the Battery; and his consent to desired legislation on such points can very likely be obtained only by favouring some measure which he thinks will improve the value of his farm, or perhaps by helping him to debauch the civil service by getting some neighbour appointed to a position for which he is not qualified.  All this is made worse by the fact that the members of a state government are generally less governed by a sense of responsibility toward the citizens of a particular city than even the worst local government that can be set up in such a city.[12]

[Footnote 1:  It is not intended to deny that there may be instances in which the state government may advantageously participate in the government of cities.  It may be urged that, in the case of great cities, like New York or Boston, many people who are not residents either do business in the city or have vast business interests there, and thus may be as deeply interested in its welfare as any of the voters.  It may also be said that state provisions for city government do not always work badly.  There are many competent judges who approve of the appointment of police commissioners by the executive of Massachusetts.  There are generally two sides to a question; and to push a doctrine to extremes is to make oneself a doctrinaire rather than a wise citizen.  But experience clearly shows that in all doubtful cases it is safer to let the balance incline in favour of local self-government than the other way.]