cities with more than half a million
inhabitants, fifteen with more than 200,000, and twenty-
eight with more than 100,000. In 1910 there were twenty-
eight cities with a population over 200,000, fifty cities
over 100,000, and ninety-eight over 50,000. It was no
uncommon occurrence for a city to double its population in a
decade. In ten years Birmingham gained 245%, Los Angeles,
211%, Seattle, 194%, Spokane, 183%, Dallas, 116%,
Schenectady, 129%.

The governmental framework of the American city is based on the English
system as exemplified in the towns of Colonial America. Their charters
were received from the Crown and their business was conducted by a mayor
and a council composed of aldermen and councilmen. The mayor was usually
appointed; the council elected by a property-holding electorate. In
New England the glorified town meeting was an important agency of local
government.

After the Revolution, mayors as well as councilmen were elected, and
the charters of the towns were granted by the legislature, not by the
executive, of the State. In colonial days charters had been granted
by the King. They had fixed for the city certain immunities and
well-defined spheres of autonomy. But when the legislatures were given
the power to grant charters, they reduced the charter to the level of
a statutory enactment, which could be amended or repealed by any
successive legislature, thereby opening up a convenient field for
political maneuvering. The courts have, moreover, construed these
charters strictly, holding the cities closely bound to those powers
which the legislatures conferred upon them.

The task of governing the early American town was simple enough. In 1790
New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston were the only
towns in the United States of over 8000 inhabitants; all together they
numbered scarcely 130,000. Their populations were homogeneous; their
wants were few; and they were still in that happy childhood when
every voter knew nearly every other voter and when everybody knew his
neighbor's business as well as his own, and perhaps better.

Gradually the towns awoke to their newer needs and demanded public
service--lighting, street cleaning, fire protection, public education.
All these matters, however, could be easily looked after by the mayor
and the council committees. But when these towns began to spread rapidly
into cities, they quickly outgrew the