ct to the approval of
the council. If the council held the key to the city treasury, the boss
reigned, for councilmen from properly gerrymandered wards could usually
be trusted to execute his will.

The third form of government was government by boards. Here it was
attempted to place the administration of various municipal activities in
the hands of independent boards. Thus a board had charge of the police,
another of the fire department, another of public works, and so on.
Often there were a dozen of these boards and not infrequently over
thirty in a single city, as in Philadelphia. Sometimes these boards were
elected by the people; sometimes they were appointed by the council;
sometimes they were appointed by the mayor; in one or two instances
they were appointed by the Governor. Often their powers were shared with
committees of the council; a committee on police, for instance, shared
with the Board of Police Commissioners the direction of police affairs.
Usually these boards were responsible to no one but the electorate
(and that remotely) and were entirely without coordination, a mere
agglomeration of independent creations generally with ill-defined
powers.

Sometimes the laws provided that not all the members of the appointive
boards should "belong to the same political party" or "be of the same
political opinion in state and national issues." It was clearly the
intention to wipe out the partizan complexion of such boards. But
this device was no stumbling-block to the boss. Whatever might be the
"opinions" on national matters of the men appointed, they usually had
a perfect understanding with the appointing authorities as to local
matters. As late as 1898, a Democratic mayor of New York (Van Wyck)
summarily removed the two Republican members of the Board of Police
Commissioners and replaced them by Republicans after his own heart. In
truth, the bipartizan board fitted snugly into the dual party regime
that existed in many cities, whereby the county offices were apportioned
to one party, the city offices to the other, and the spoils to both. It
is doubtful if any device was ever more deceiving and less satisfactory
than the bipartizan board.

The reader must not be led to think that any one of these plans of
municipal government prevailed at any one time. They all still exist,
contemporaneously with the newer commission plan and the city manager
plan.

Hand in hand with these experiments in governmental mechani