icians. It has not always been a corrupt sway; but it has
rarely, if ever, given efficient administration.

Happily there are not wanting signs that the general conditions which
have fostered the Ring are disappearing. The period of reform set in
about 1890, when people began to be interested in the study of municipal
government. It was not long afterwards that the first authoritative
books on the subject appeared. Then colleges began to give courses in
municipal government; editors began to realize the public's concern in
local questions and to discuss neighborhood politics as well as national
politics. By 1900 a new era broke--the era of the Grand Jury. Nothing so
hopeful in local politics had occurred in our history as the disclosures
which followed. They provoked the residuum of conscience in the
citizenry and the determination that honesty should rule in public
business and politics as well as in private transactions. The Grand Jury
inquisitions, however, demonstrated clearly that the criminal law was no
remedy for municipal misrule. The great majority of floaters and illegal
voters who were indicted never faced a trial jury. The results of the
prosecutions for bribery and grosser political crimes were scarcely more
encouraging. It is true that one Abe Ruef in a California penitentiary
is worth untold sermons, editorials, and platform admonitions, and
serves as a potent warning to all public malefactors. Yet the example is
soon forgotten; and the people return to their former political habits.

But out of this decade of gang-hunting and its impressive experiences
with the shortcomings of our criminal laws came the new municipal era
which we have now fully entered, the era of enlightened administration.
This new era calls for a reconstruction of the city government. Its
principal feature is the rapid spread of the Galveston or Commission
form of government and of its modification, the City Manager plan, the
aim of which is to centralize governmental authority and to entice able
men into municipal office. And there are many other manifestations of
the new civic spirit. The mesmeric influence of national party names in
civic politics is waning; the rise of home rule for the city is severing
the unholy alliance between the legislature and the local Ring; the
power to grant franchises is being taken away from legislative bodies
and placed directly with the people; nominations are passing out of
the hands of cliques and