ith bosses in
Philadelphia, deploring reform in Chicago, and beating good government
with corruption funds in New York."[174] This is the natural fruit of
our system of municipal government. The powerful corporate interests
engaged in the exploitation of municipal franchises are securely
entrenched behind a series of constitutional and legal checks on the
majority which makes it extremely difficult for public opinion to
exercise any effective control over them. The effort to provide a remedy
for this condition of affairs took the form of a movement to limit the
powers of the council. Boards and commissions have been created in whose
hands have been placed much of the business formerly controlled by this
body. The policy of subdividing the legislative authority of the city
and distributing it among a number of independent boards has been
carried so far, notably in New York, that, as Seth Low observes, the
council has been largely deprived of all its legislative functions with
the single exception of the power to grant public franchises.[175] It
must not be inferred, however, that public opinion has favored the
retention of this power by the council. The attempt on the part of the
people to control the franchise-granting power has thus far largely
failed, not because of any lack of popular support, but because our
constitutional and political arrangements have made it almost impossible
for any reasonable majority to overcome the opposition of organized
wealth.

Our efforts to bring about reforms in municipal government have thus far
largely failed to accomplish what was expected of them because we have
persistently refused to recognize the principle of majority rule. We
have clung tenaciously to the system of checks and balances with all its
restraints on popular control. The evils of municipal government are not
the evils of democracy, but the evils of a system which limits the power
of the majority in the interest of the minority.

CHAPTER XI

INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION

The eighteenth-century conception of liberty was the outgrowth of the
political conditions of that time. Government was largely in the hands
of a ruling class who were able to further their own interests at the
expense of the many who were unrepresented. It was but natural under
these circumstances that the people should seek to limit the exercise of
political authority, since every check imposed upon the government
lessened th