XIX

OF THE GOVERNMENTAL FUNCTION, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

The matter of most interest in modern American legislation for municipal government is probably the home-rule principle.  That is, statutes permitting cities or towns, or even villages, to draw and adopt their own charters and govern themselves in their own way.  The charter thus adopted may, of course, be the old-fashioned government of mayor, aldermen, common council, etc., or it may be the newly invented government by commission, based substantially on the theory of permanent officials chosen at infrequent intervals, and officers, in so far as possible, appointed, and not elected.  The one makes for efficiency, the other for democracy.  At present the American people seem to have a craze for efficiency, even at the expense of representative government, and of principles hitherto thought constitutional.  It is impossible to tell how long it will last.  It may carry us into the extreme of personal government, national, State, and local, or history may repeat itself and we may return to the principle of frequent elections and direct responsibility to the voters under the arbitrament of the courts of law.  We may go on to special courts (declared odious in the Great Case of Monopolies) and administrative law, or be content with improved understanding of the law we already have.

These matters are too large for us; coming down to more concrete facts, we find that the general tendencies of legislation upon State, and particularly municipal, government are to somewhat enlarge its functions, but considerably to limit its expenditure.  Greater distrust is shown in legislatures, municipal as well as State, and a greater trust and power reposed in individual heads, and a much greater power intrusted to more or less permanent boards and commissions, usually not elective, and often clothed with vast powers not expressly submitted to the scrutiny of courts of law.  The purposes of education are somewhat extended, generally in the direction of better education, more technical and practical and less “classical."[1] Charity includes a largely increased recreation for the people, State provision for many more classes of the invalid and incompetent, specialized homes for various sorts of infirm or inebriate, and some little charity in the guise of bounties of seed, etc., to needy farmers, which latter, however, have usually been held unconstitutional.

[Footnote 1:  Though a lady orator in Boston this year complains to an audience of labor unionists that trades schools and industrial education tend to “peasantize” the poor.  Peasanthood was the condition of the agricultural laborer; it was skilled labor that made him free—­neither peasant, peon, nor villein.  See p. 20, above.]