weeks of labor, have given way to a uniform system of
public accounting. In the words of the Springfield, Mass.,
_Republican_, "The work of the Bureau of Public Research is far more
fundamental than the question of substituting city organization with
a commission."

A fourth cause of evils is that of state interference in purely
local affairs.

In the United States the city may not act except where authorized
expressly and especially by the state. In Europe the city may do
anything it is not forbidden to do, and municipal success there is
based on this greater freedom. The European city, though subject to
general state law, makes its own local laws, not in conflict with,
but in addition to, state law. But in the United States the state
legislature, accustomed to interfere in matters of interest to the
state government, failed to distinguish between such matters and
those of exclusive interest to the cities themselves. To illustrate:
The Cleveland Municipal Association reported in 1900 that
legislators from an outside county had introduced radical changes in
almost every department of their city government. In Massachusetts
the police, water works, and park systems are directly under the
state, and the only part the cities have is to pay the bills. In
Pennsylvania for thirty-one years the state kept upon the statute
books an act imposing upon Philadelphia a self-perpetuating
commission, appointed without reference to the city's wishes, and
with all power to erect a city hall and levy taxes to collect the
twenty-million-dollar cost.

State and national political parties, controlling the legislature,
have meddled in the private affairs of the city, resulting in the
decay of the city council and the destruction of the local autonomy.
Professor Goodnow says that under these conditions a scientific
solution of the vexed question of municipal organization has been
impossible.

The remedy lies in restoring to the city its proper field of
legislation. Already thirty states have passed constitutional
amendments granting greater legislative powers to the cities. Five
states now allow cities to amend their own charters. But in direct
opposition to this movement for municipal home rule, the commission
form takes the last step in the destruction of the city's
legislative body an