ne of these fastidious
moralists is not a rich man, and Germany escapes this difficulty.

The government of a German city is so simple in its machinery that
every voter can easily understand it. No doubt Seth Low and George L.
Rives could explain to an intelligent man the charter under which New
York City is governed, but they are very, very rare exceptions.

Our city government is bad, not because democracy is a failure, not
because Americans are inherently dishonest, but because we are a
superficially educated people, untrained to think, and, therefore,
still worshipping the Jeffersonian fetich of divided responsibility
between the three branches of the government. The judicial, the
legislative, and the executive are, with minute care, forced to check
and to impede one another, and we even carry this antiquated
superstition, born of a suspicious and timid republicanism, into the
government of our cities. With the exception of those cities in
America which are governed by commissions, our cities are slaves as
compared with the German cities. They are slaves of the predatory
politicians, and they, on the other hand, are the bribed taskmasters
of the rich corporations. The German asks in bewilderment why our men
of wealth, of leisure, and of intelligence are not devoting themselves
to the service of the state and the city. Alas, the answer is the
pitiable one that the electoral machinery is so complicated that the
voters can be and are, continually humbugged; and worse, many of the
wealthy and intelligent, through their stake in valuable city
franchises, are incompetent to deal fairly with the municipal affairs
of their own city. Both in England and in America, the man in the
street is quite sound in his judgment, when he declines to trust those
who dabble in securities with which their own department has dealings.
The British Caesar's wife official, caught with a handkerchief on her
person, woven on the looms of a company whose directors are dealing
with the British government, can hardly claim exemption from
suspicion, because she bought the handkerchief in America. We all know
that when London sniffles the value of handkerchiefs goes up in New
York. Caesar's wife finds it difficult to persuade honorable men that
she merely had a financial cold, but not the smallest interest in a
corner in handkerchiefs.

In the great majority of German cities public-utility services, gas,
water, electricity, street-railways, slaugh