and
publicity of proceedings, and we ask the gentlemen in all
earnestness why American city councils will not take on new life
just as the city councils of every other country have done in the
past.

The two great problems of American city government are: first,
administration; secondly, municipal home rule. The solution of both
depends upon the existence of two separately constituted departments
of government. This principle is being emphasized by the leading
scholars of political science, as illustrated by the program of the
National Municipal League. In fact, Honorable Judges, every
deep-seated reform in our large cities for the past quarter of a
century has tended toward this cardinal doctrine of municipal
success. The Ohio Municipal Code Commission, after two years of
careful study and observation, presented a bill based upon the
principles which we defend tonight, namely, a separation of
administration from legislation, and secondly, municipal home rule.

In direct opposition to this, the gentlemen present and advocate as
a permanent scheme for the organization of American cities, both
large and small, a commission form, a quasi-legislative and
administrative board patterned to give mediocrity in the performance
of both functions, success in neither; a form which destroys forever
the possibility of developing an efficient executive cabinet and is
entirely out of harmony with the advancing idea of municipal home
rule.

Mr. George Luxford, the third speaker on the Affirmative, said:

It has been made very clear by my colleagues that the present
shameful condition of many of our American cities is due in large
measure to the peculiar form of the government patterned after a
scheme which is adapted to a sovereign government like the state or
nation. The Negative demand an isolation which history shows, so far
as our American cities are concerned, leads to a complete confusion
of functions, with a consequent loss of responsibility. Knowing the
inadequacy of the scheme they then demanded municipal home rule; but
we have shown that the Affirmative are thoroughly committed to
municipal home rule which under the commission form alone can be
safely intrusted to cities. State interference in city government is
the child of the form of government for which our friends of the