with him on which the issues of peace and war have depended speak highly of his perfect self-possession, his clear, quick appreciation of vital points, and his high resolve. Count Muravieff told me that he had never known any one more rapid in assimilating the contents of official papers. That the Emperor has sometimes disappointed the hopes which some have built upon his assurances of sympathy

and agreement is true. Nor is it to be wondered at. The Emperor is sincere enough, but the dead weight of the administrative machine is too much for him. He is like a bird trying to fly with a broken wing. Not until he has behind him the declared will of the elected representatives of his people will he be able steadily to press onward to the realization of his lofty ideals.

INVESTIGATIONS, indictments, trials, convictions for municipal shortcomings and dishonesty have been the order of the day throughout the whole country during the past few years, to an unprecedented and, from one point of view, an appalling extent. In Milwaukee one grand jury found twelve bills of indictment charging eight city officials with various forms of corruption. A subsequent grand jury indicted seven more, including a commissioner of public works, a superintendent of bridges, several aldermen and the county printer, for the acceptance of bribes; and a prominent business man for paying a bribe. Another jury indicted the Republican boss. All told, nearly two hundred true bills have been found and District Attorney McGovern is still at work.

In Minneapolis a considerable list of city officials were sentenced to state prison in connection with the Ames scandals. A former chief of police, for six and onehalf years; two former detectives, for three and one-half and three years respectively, and a former special policeman for six and one-half years. True, some were awarded new trials on technicalities, but the fact remains and can not be escaped that on the evidence they were convicted before a jury of their peers of gross misdemeanors in office.

In the summer and fall of 1900, during the second administration of Mayor Perry, the city government of Grand Rapids, Michigan, had under consideration various plans for securing an abundant supply of pure water. In connection with a proposed deal by which the city was to award a contract to a private company to bring eighteen million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan for a period of fifty years, an ugly scandal developed. The contract was never awarded, but $100,000 of "boodle" money was distributed. The city attorney and four or five other officials were indicted by the grand jury in the early part of 1901. The city attorney and some of the others were convicted of bribery. Owing to complications in connection with one of the banks, the attorney and the paying teller of the bank confessed to violations of the United States banking laws, and were sentenced to two years' imprisonment. When the sentence of the former city attorney expired he was recalled to Grand Rapids to face a new sentence for bribery, as his conviction for this offense had been sustained by the court of last appeal. The maximum penalty for this crime is ten years in the state prison. Under these trying circumstances, he concluded to give to the prosecutors a complete statement of the frauds. On the strength of his confession, and other confessions since made, twenty-five warrants were issued, seventeen of which were on charges of bribery,

five of conspiracy, two of perjury, one of attempted subornation of perjury. Of the men arrested seven have pleaded guilty in open court; and some of the others made statements to the prosecuting attorney which were used as corroborative evidence in some of the cases. The persons for whom the warrants were issued were: Ten ex-aldermen, four aldermen, one exmayor, one ex-member of the board of public works, one ex-city clerk, one state Senator, four newspaper men, three attorneys.

Denver organized a League for Honest Elections on October 1, 1903, after a charter election which was described as "a carnival of corruption." Fraud was so brazen and carried to such an extent that a meeting of citizens was called and the League formed. Its first move was to secure the arrest and conviction of seven defendants, including a state Senator and a deputy county clerk, for padding registration lists. Nineteen other defendants, including several women, were arrested on similar charges. Six others were wanted but could not be found.

Philadelphia has under indictment a number of officials and ex-officials on various charges of official malfeasance: one for entering into a corrupt agreement to prevent competition and to sell sand for use in the filtration plant at a high price; another for altering the specifications of contracts so as "to eat" up an unused balance for the benefit of the contractors; others for conspiring to defraud the city in the erection of the smallpox hospital.

In the latter case the former director of public safety was held in $5,000 bail, first, because he so juggled the figures as to exhaust the entire appropriation; second, because he knowingly let the contract to the highest bidder; third, because he knowingly contracted to pay $6,900 for tiling 3,730 square feet (only one-half the tiling required), while in the possession of a bid of $4,200. The architect employed by the city on this work was held in the same bail because, three months after the contract had been let, he approved a plan making radical and fundamental changes in the plan upon which the bids had been made and the contract let, the changes in each case being entirely in favor of the contractors, and at the expense of the city and of the

structural strength and fitness of the building; because he permitted and countenanced during the construction of the work other changes of a similar character and entailing similar results; because of the substitution of maple for mastic floors, and so on through the whole nasty story of cheating the city in its endeavor to provide adequate accommodations for the helpless and the sick.

Almost immediately after the hearings in these cases, the experts appointed by Mayor Weaver to examine into the letting and execution of filtration contracts reported that first-class work under the specifications, instead of costing $18,760,000, the contract price, should not have cost over $12,430,000, which includes an allowance of twenty per cent, or $2,075,208 for legitimate contractor's profits. The difference is $6,330,000. In other words, $18,760,000 has been paid for work costing the contractors $10,356,000.

A far western correspondent, an important state official, himself charged with important power of scrutiny and investigation, declares that "there is a general shaking up in municipal affairs going on throughout the West. The daily papers tell of investigations in all departments of public affairs; expert accountants are being called in, grand juries have been assembled, and in general there is an effort being made, such as never before, to arrive at some definite form of administration of public funds that will show without too much elaboration the disposition of the people's money" and prevent its dishonest use or diversion.

L. G. Powers, of the Census Bureau, at a meeting of the National Municipal League, told practically the same story. On one day recently the Census Bureau received word from three separate examiners that they could not proceed with their work in three separate cities, because the city's books were in the hands of the grand jury!

In St. Louis, as district attorney, Joseph W. Folk was greatly handicapped in his punishment of confessed and convicted boodlers by the technicalities of the law, which, originally devised to prevent injustice being done to the one innocent man among the one hundred, are now being utilized to prevent the ninety-nine guilty men from getting their just deserts. For

instance, the jury found "Boss" Butler, of St. Louis, guilty, but sentence was reversed because, as one observer put it, “a de facto boodler attempted to bribe a de facto Board of Health and get a de facto 'rake-off' from the cost of removing de facto garbage under a de facto contract by virture of a de facto law, and the de facto boodler was convicted by a de facto jury in a de facto court and sentenced to a de facto penitentiary. If the Supreme Bench of Missouri had been less impressed by technicalities, Ed Butler would now be serving a de facto sentence at de facto labor."

If we should dwell too long or too exclusively upon these various disclosures the result would certainly be most distressing and fill us with fear and trembling as to the future, especially if we take into consideration, as we must, the indifference of the average voter to the dignity, importance and demands of the municipal situation. The burden of far too many reports is that the great mass of citizens is either too busy or too indifferent to care what happens.

As illustrative of this point attention may be called to the Boston Board of Aldermen, which has steadily deteriorated during the past ten years, both in character and ability. During the same period the "stay at home" vote at municipal elections has been as steadily increasing. The Boston Advertiser declares that: "The following table, giving the percentage of registered voters who remained away from the polls in the years indicated, tells its own unvarnished story of waning interest in local affairs:

1895... 1897...

1899.

.14.57 per cent .20.80"

.19.29 .27.53

1901... 1903... "When one realizes that only a very small percentage over half of the assessed polls voted in December, there is evidence that new methods of awakening the people to a lively concern in the policies of their own city government are needed."

It is accepted as an established fact among "practical" politicians, that the machine has but little difficulty in carrying "light elections.' These facts may serve to explain, at least in part, the election to the Boston Board of Aldermen of a

man but recently convicted of personating another at a federal civil service examination and who was actually in jail serving out his sentence at the time he was elected!

The average voter is, unfortunately, too indifferent or too busy to register as he should, or to vote when he should, although this delinquency has been explained, and with a certain show of reason, to be due to the fact that registering and voting not being a daily occupation, does not fit into the day's routine fixed by long habit."

On the other hand it must be confessed that the "average voter," as we have come to describe the great mass of those who are entrusted with the franchise, can be and is more easily aroused to action by some evil at a distance than by the municipal iniquity at his door. Some months ago a meeting was held in one of our larger eastern cities to denounce the Mormons and their customs. A large hall was crowded and great indignation was very properly aroused; but in this same city there had not been a meeting attended by one hundred people to consider local shortcomings for three years, and yet that city has a "machine" that is regarded as a pattern for boodlers and corruptionists throughout the country. The anti-Mormon meeting was needed, as subsequent developments have shown; but it should have completed its work by providing for equally severe and strenuous condemnation and correction of local shortcomings, which are likely to prove more dangerous to the morals of the coming generations in that city than the delinquencies of Reed Smoot and his colleagues, dangerous and subversive as they are.

Voters show their indifference to their obligations in still another way. In the same city where so much concern was shown about the morals of Utah and so little about its own political morals, a certain lieutenant of police was convicted by a police court for failure to obey orders to suppress certain unlicensed saloons and disorderly houses. This fact, however, did not prevent a group of eminently respectable spectable citizens, including lawyers, clergymen and manufacturers, from asking the mayor not to deal harshly with the lieutenant, as he was within six months of going on the retired list! Ac

cording to President Powell, of the Chicago Investigating Commission, "whenever a policemen is in danger of losing his job, there is usually an alderman or two ready to come to his rescue. There is also a large body of so-called 'prominent citizens' to plead for him."

Indifferent voters beget indifferent officials. "What's the use? Who cares?" is a question all too frequently heard and all too frequently excused by the facts. As a correspondent, a university president, puts it, "There is laxity in administration all along the line, even in so small a matter as the ringing of the curfew in our town. The custom of ringing, established by law, has disappeared because nobody seems to have thought enough about it to keep on enforcing it." This recital of some of the more significant features of the situation, this consideration of the adverse phases, must not, however, be permitted to destroy the perspective of our view. A man may be sick but a fortnight and his experiences so unpleasant that complaint is justified, but if he permits the other 351 days to be fretted and made uncomfortable by the memory of those two weeks, we do not hold a high opinion of his judgment or his balance. So, in considering the developments of municipal activity, we must not dwell so long on the undoubted evils as to form an exaggerated view of their importance and significance. A western newspaper has thus described the situation: "Municipal dishonesty is being exposed in scores of localities throughout the United States. The multiplicity of cases that have been unearthed of late are taken by many to mean that the public service is growing more degenerate. This view is hardly correct. Corruption has existed since the beginning of government, and the fact that dishonest officials are being run from cover and brought to prosecution is a good sign, for it shows that the people are active in moving for a cleaner and better administration of public affairs."

It is doubtful whether there has ever been a time in the history of this country when the people were so aggressive and determined to introduce strict business methods into public service. The people are becoming inquisitive and are requiring closer accountings of stewardships.

As a matter of fact, it is better to unearth scandals and punish thieves than to allow them to pursue their work unmolested in the dark, while the people hug the delusion that they have honest public servants. Every scandal brought to light and every offender punished is a move in the right direction and is a sure index of improved conditions for the future.

Former Mayor Low took this very ground in an address he delivered just before he closed his own administration. He maintained that "decade by decade the standards of municipal life were advancing and by reason of these higher standards, dishonest practices that were formerly accepted as a matter of course have now become either impossible" or to be punished by publicity, indictment and imprisonment. Mr. Low referred especially to New York City, but the conditions in other cities differ in degree and not in kind from those in the national metropolis. These changed conditions are due to the fact that crimes committed against the municipality are now searched out, brought to trial and punished, while formerly they were regarded as part of "the game.

Far from indicating that municipal government has failed, the disclosures of the past few years must be taken as indicating a change for the better in the standards of municipal morality.

Moreover, we must take into consideration the truly vast amount of constructive municipal work that has been undertaken in every section of the country. For instance, every important American city is seeking to abolish its slums, and striking and hopeful advances have been made in the line of the proper housing of the poor. Social settlements are becoming a marked feature of our cities, and the beautifying of towns and villages is exciting an interest that increases year by year as the work of the rapidly lengthening list of local improvement societies is more and more in evidence. Cities are entering into a generous rivalry for the promotion of sanitary reforms and other measures that will enhance the health, comfort and wellbeing of the people, and develop their love for the artistic and beautiful. To be a "dweller of no mean city" is becoming a laudable ambition; to have one's town keep up with the procession of other

towns is an object for which publicspirited citizens are striving.

There is an increasing appreciation of the old adage that "cleanliness is next to godliness." There is a growing conviction that health and cleanliness must go hand in hand. The solution of the pure water problems is now recognized as an essential sanitary measure.

Other beneficial municipal institutions are kindergartens and summer vacation schools, into which are gathered children who otherwise would be roaming the streets and falling into evil associations. Free lecture systems on popular subjects are factors in the life of cities. Playgrounds for the children of the congested tenements, and free summer outings into the country, are popular forms of public charity, and no city of any pretensions is without its public park. In the larger cities, systems of parks delight the esthetic taste, and minister to the pleasure and comfort of the community.

Moreover, the people are showing a growing disregard of party lines in municipal affairs. They no longer ask as insistently as they once did, "Is this candidate a Republican?" "Is this nominee a Democrat?" What they insist upon asking is," Is he honest?" "Is he capable?" "What has been his record when holding public office?"

A year ago Cleveland elected a Democratic auditor and gave Roosevelt the biggest majority ever given in the city. Chicago went Republican by 105,000 in November, 1904, and Democratic on local issues in the following April. Toledo gave Roosevelt 12,912 plurality and elected an independent local ticket by 2,348 majority. In 1904 seventeen Iowa cities elected independent tickets. In Indiana, Lafayette, Laporte, Shelbyville, Alexandria, Vincennes, Lebanon, Jeffersonville, Elkhart, Madison, Noblesville, Huntingdon, Peru, ordinarily Republican, went Democratic on local issues.

Kansas returns tell the same story. As the Topeka Journal pointed out, "The pendulum swings from one extreme to another in Kansas municipal elections, and it is evident that the voters are breaking away more and more from party lines. This was evident in Topeka where strong Republican precincts were carried by the Democratic nominee and where some

Democratic precincts gave Republican majorities." Los Angeles, which gave 12,000 plurality to Mr. Roosevelt, gave a plurality of 9,000 to the Democratic nominee for street superintendent because of the protest and campaign of the Municipal League, and a non-partisan school board was elected by a majority of 3,000 over the straight Republican partisan nominees. In Denver, Judge Ben B. Lindsey, whom none of the bosses wanted, was eventually accepted by all and received 53,000 votes out of a possible 54,000. Jerome's marvelous campaign in New York against all the bosses tells the same story of awakening public opinion. He appealed from the bosses to the people with the result already known. Bosses will not disappear because of his campaign, or Judge Lindsey's, but they will have, and are having, a harder time of it, and as the people appreciate their power and exercise it the results will be manifested in a cleaner, a more wholesome municipal life, and a sounder public conscience.

The results in Philadelphia show what a thoroughly aroused electorate can accomplish. An entrenched machine of farreaching influence and innumerable ramifications, with the unyielding support of rich corporations and the vicious classes, led by men of long experience in political manipulation, unhampered by scruples or conscience, has been routed and defeated, and, let us hope, smashed beyond repair. The demand of the people was for a square deal and a government by the people. The demand has been granted because the people wanted it and wanted it enough to fight for it. As one political leader put it, in comparing the campaign just closed with an earlier one, "This one is different, because we are up against the people.'

That is the whole story in a nutshell. When the politicians are "up against the people" they are helpless. The present municipal outlook is encouraging because the people at last seem to be genuinely interested in municipal problems, and in honest government. There is a general demand for better men in office, and although official corruption still abounds, there is a marked improvement in the tone of the civic conscience which will in time work a revolution in the conduct of municipal affairs.