a city than for that many
people outside the city. It is contrary to the fundamental
conception of a legislative body that it be composed of a few. In no
country of free institutions is a legislative body so constituted.
My colleague has proved, and it cannot be successfully controverted,
that in the city, as well as in the state, there is a large field
for legislation. Why, then, should there not be a legislative body
to perform the work of legislation? Why place the work in the hands
of a body that is primarily administrative in character?

This objection alone must forever prevent the larger cities of the
United States from adopting the commission plan. Or, if adopted, it
must, for this reason alone, prove itself a failure.

Mr. Robbins replied for the Affirmative:

The Negative argue that the mechanisms of government in Boston may
differ from those of San Francisco. This is not a discussion of the
mechanisms of government. It involves deep and fundamental
principles relative to a given form of city organization. The
gentlemen have not, nor cannot, cite one iota of evidence that the
underlying principles of organization in the governments of Boston
and San Francisco should be different. The allusion to changing
mechanisms is no excuse for their failure to set in operation a
definite and positive form of organization. Yet the gentlemen have
ingeniously endeavored to evade this duty. Why have they done so?
Because every system of municipal organization based upon the
separation of powers--for which the gentlemen are contending--has
proved an admitted failure.

Do not the citizens of Brooklyn and San Francisco, as the citizens
of every American city, like to drink pure water? Don't they desire
good transportation facilities, and aren't they glad when they have
clean streets and honest administration? Why, then, don't the
gentlemen come forward, as the Affirmative has done, with a specific
form of organization which provides for the successful
administration of the underlying features of city government?
Instead, the gentlemen seem to delight in wandering across the seas,
telling what might happen if we would be indulgent enough to pattern
our form of organization after that of France, Germany, or Bohemia.
Yet they glibly refuse to consider that the city problem of this
coun