[Sidenote:  New experiments.] The discovery of these wholesale robberies, and of other villainies on a smaller scale in other cities, has led to much discussion of the problems of municipal government, and to many attempts at practical reform.  The present is especially a period of experiments, yet in these experiments perhaps a general drift of opinion may be discerned.  People seem to be coming to regard cities more as if they were huge business corporations than as if they were little republics.  The lesson has been learned that in executive matters too much limitation of power entails destruction of responsibility; the “ring” is now more dreaded than the “one-man power;” and there is accordingly a manifest tendency to assail the evil by concentrating power and responsibility in the mayor.

[Sidenote:  New government of Brooklyn.] The first great city to adopt this method was Brooklyn.  In the first place the city council was simplified and made a one-chambered council consisting of nineteen aldermen.  Besides this council of aldermen, the people elect only three city officers,—­the mayor, comptroller, and auditor.  The comptroller is the principal finance officer and book-keeper of the city; and the auditor must approve bills against the city, whether great or small, before they can be paid.  The mayor appoints, without confirmation by the council, all executive heads of departments; and these executive heads are individuals, not boards.  Thus there is a single police commissioner, a single fire commissioner, a single health commissioner, and so on; and each of these heads appoints his own subordinates; so that the principle of defined responsibility permeates the city government from top to bottom,[14] In a few cases, where the work to be done is rather discretionary than executive in character, it is intrusted to a board; thus there is a board of assessors, a board of education, and a board of elections.  These are all appointed by the mayor, but for terms not coinciding with his own; “so that, in most cases, no mayor would appoint the whole of any such board unless he were to be twice elected by the people.”  But the executive officers are appointed by the mayor for terms coincident with his own, that is for two years.  “The mayor is elected at the general election in November; he takes office on the first of January following, and for one month the great departments of the city are carried on for him by the appointees of his predecessor.  On the first of February it becomes his duty to appoint his own heads of departments, and thus each incoming mayor has the opportunity to make an administration in all its parts in sympathy with himself.”

[Footnote 14:  Seth Low on “Municipal Government,” in Bryce’s American Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 626.]