o the whole
commission where his identity is lost. This department trading has
found its way into the Galveston commission, claimed to have the
best commission of any city under this form of government. Here we
find that at the same time the prosecutor of the city cases in the
police court is allowed the right to collect a fee of $10 for every
criminal, drunk, or vagrant convicted, and $5 for every one who
pleads guilty; a 50-year franchise is granted to the Galveston
Street Railway Co. without a vote of the people, the city not to
receive one cent of tax and no compensation.

So, Honorable Judges, we must consider that, while the commission
form may be a temporary success in a few small cities, its permanent
success there is in grave doubt. Under these conditions we do not
ask that it be abolished, but that under no circumstances its
application be made general in this country where other forms of
city government are in practice more successful and in theory more
correct.

REBUTTAL

Mr. Earl Stewart opened for the Negative:

The gentlemen contend that the work of the city is almost wholly of
a business nature. Honorable Judges, if the city does not have
important legislative duties, what do we mean by local
self-government? The courts have held again and again that the work
of the city is primarily governmental. Says Judge Dillon: "The city
is essentially public and political in character." Not a business
corporation in this country could place vast sums of money in the
hands of four of five men without the safeguard of some supervising
body. Yet New York City has an annual expenditure of $150,000,000,
equaled by the aggregate of seven other American cities of 400,000
population; more than that of nations; three times that of the
Argentine Republic; four times that of Sweden and Norway combined.
Honorable Judges, the American people are too business-like ever to
place the entire raising, appropriating, and extending of such vast
sums of money, or the half, or the quarter, or the tenth of such, in
the hands of five men without the adequate check and safeguard of
some supervising and reviewing body, call it congress, legislature,
or council.

The gentlemen condemn divisions of powers because the city's
functions are of such a mixed nature and no strict line of
separati