It is a significant fact, that during the last quarter of a century, the tendency in municipal organization has been toward concentration of powers.  Certain of our cities have recognized the wisdom of such action, but have unwisely attempted to concentrate only the executive power whereas the real solution lies in concentrating all governmental authority in one definite and responsible body.

New York City tried such a plan and it has failed; failed because its separate legislative department has proved an obstruction to effective action.  Consequently, there has been a continual tendency to deprive the council of all power, until today its only function is to vote on franchises and issue certain licenses.  So evident is the imperative need of concentrating the legislative and administrative powers in one body, that there is now a charter revision committee meeting in New York whose great object is to consider the advisability of entirely eliminating the separate council, and creating in its place a small commission possessing both legislative and administrative authority.  Practically the same condition obtains in the city of Boston.

What is true of New York and Boston is equally true of scores of other cities.  Memphis tried for years to reform her government with an isolated council.  Today she is clamoring at the doors of her legislature for a commission charter.  Within the past two years more than a dozen states have provided for a commission form of government, while within the past year more than a dozen cities have actually thrown away their old forms and assumed the commission system.

The success of a separate legislative body in state and national government is the only excuse for its retention in our cities, yet the failure, for over a century in all its different forms and variations, proves that such a government is unsuited to them.  There are several important and fundamental characteristics of the city that demand a different form of government and show conclusively that there is no need of a separate legislative body.  In the first place, the city is not a sovereign government, but is subordinate to state and nation.  There is no reason for a distinct legislature to determine the broad matters of policy, for they are determined for the citizens of the city as well as those of the country, by the state and national legislatures, in which both the city and country are represented.  In the second place, the work of a city is largely administrative and of a business character, as my colleagues will show, and there is no necessity for a separate council to legislate when a commissioner is better able, as we shall show, to pass the kind of legislation characteristic of the city.

In the third place, we do not find, as in the state, the necessity of a large and