ir colonial garments. Yet the
legislatures were loath to cast the old garments aside. One may say that
from 1840 to 1901, when the Galveston plan of commission government was
inaugurated, American municipal government was nothing but a series
of contests between a small body of alert citizens attempting to
fix responsibility on public officers and a few adroit politicians
attempting to elude responsibility; both sides appealing to an
electorate which was habitually somnolent but subject to intermittent
awakenings through spasms of righteousness.

During this epoch no important city remained immune from ruthless
legislative interference. Year after year the legislature shifted
officers and responsibilities at the behest of the boss. "Ripper bills"
were passed, tearing up the entire administrative systems of important
municipalities. The city was made the plaything of the boss and the
machine.

Throughout the constant shifts that our city governments have undergone
one may, however, discern three general plans of government.

The first was the centering of power in the city council, whether
composed of two chambers--a board of aldermen and a common council--as
in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, or of one council, as in many
lesser cities. It soon became apparent that a large body, whose chief
function is legislation, is utterly unfit to look after administrative
details. Such a body, in order to do business, must act through
committees. Responsibility is scattered. Favoritism is possible in
letting contracts, in making appointments, in depositing city funds, in
making public improvements, in purchasing supplies and real estate,
and in a thousand other ways. So, by controlling the appointment
of committees, a shrewd manipulator could virtually control all the
municipal activities and make himself overlord of the city.

The second plan of government attempted to make the mayor the
controlling force. It reduced the council to a legislative body and
exalted the mayor into a real executive with power to appoint and to
remove heads of departments, thereby making him responsible for the city
administration. Brooklyn under Mayor Seth Low was an encouraging example
of this type of government. But the type was rarely found in a pure
form. The politician succeeded either in electing a subservient mayor or
in curtailing the mayor's authority by having the heads of departments
elected or appointed by the council or made subje