ot should be elected mayor of New York, with Colonel John
Biddle as police commissioner, and Colonel Goethals as commissioner of
street-cleaning. May the day come when we can avail ourselves of the
services of such men to govern our cities!

The magistracy numbers 34, of whom 18 receive salaries. The town
council consists of 144 members, half of whom must be householders.
They are elected for six years, and one-third of them retire every two
years, but are eligible for re-election. They are elected by the
three-class system of voting, which is described in another chapter.
This three-class system of voting results in certain inequalities. In
Prussia, for example, fifteen per cent. of the voters have two-thirds
of the electoral power, and relatively the same may be said of Berlin.

Unlike the municipal elections in American cities, the voters have
only a simple ballot to put in the ballot-box. National and state
politics play no part, and the voter is not confused by issues that
have nothing to do with his city government. The government of their
cities is arranged for on the basis that officials will be honest, and
work for the city and not for themselves. Our city organizations often
give the air of living under laws framed to prevent thievery, bribery,
blackmailing, and surreptitious murder. We make our municipal laws as
though we were in the stone age.

These German cities are also, unlike American cities, autonomous. They
have no state-made charters to interpret and to obey; they are not
restricted as to debt or expenditure; and they are not in the grip of
corporations that have bought or leased water, gas, electricity, or
street-railway franchises, and these, represented by the wealthiest
and most intelligent citizens, become, through the financial
undertakings and interests of these very same citizens, often the
worst enemies of their own city. The German cities are spared also the
confusion, which is injected into our politics by a fortunately small
class of reformers, with the prudish peculiarities of morbid vestals;
men who cannot work with other men, and who bring the virile virtues,
the sound charities, and wholesome morality into contempt.

We all know him, the smug snob of virtue. You may find him a professor
at the university; you may find him leading prayer-meetings and
preaching pure politics; you may find him the bloodless
philanthropist; you may find him a rank atheist, with his patents for
the bri