The payments made

in bills.

Violations of the law.

The liquor dealers and Tammany.

Q. This you know, that you gave to Williams every month a part of the identical money that was contributed by these policy shops and liquor dealers? A. Yes, sir.

Q. You didn't change the money? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Was it an understood thing in the department that the money should go in bills wherever money was to be paid in the manner that you have prescribed? A. Oh, yes.

Q. In bills? A. Yes.

Q. So as to leave no trace? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Speaking of the Bohemian liquor dealers, is it a fact that the money they paid was paid in consideration of their being allowed to sell on Sundays? A. Yes,

sir.

Q. When you went to Eighty-eighth Street, what collections were made in that precinct? A. There was some policy shops there and some pool-rooms; that was all.

Q. How much did they pay? A. Well, altogether about $900 a month; about $800 a month.

Q. Could you give us the number of policy shops, because we want to be as exact as we can; can you give us the number of policy shops and the number of pool-rooms that were in that precinct? A. I think there were about 10 policy shops and three pool

rooms.

Q. Can you tell us how much these pool-rooms pay? A. Two hundred dollars a month.

Q. How about the liquor dealers? A. Didn't touch them. Q. Was it not an understood thing then that the liquor dealers had made their peace with the police through Tammany Hall? A. Yes, sir.

Q. And that instead of paying directly to the police they should pay Tammany Hall; was not that the understood thing? A. Well, that was the understood I don't know whether that was really so or not, that is what I heard.

Q. That is your reason for your non-interference? A. Yes, sir.

CHAPTER XXVII

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THE ORGANIZATION OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

198. Home Rule for Cities

THE constant interference of the state legislature in municipal affairs has been accompanied by many palpable evils and has led to a demand on the part of some reformers for "municipal home rule' a condition more easily advocated in the abstract than defined in the concrete. In the last constitutional convention of New York Mr. Root made an argument against allowing cities too great an independence from central control:

state-wide social and

I entered the chamber while that gentleman was referring to Cities and the free cities of the middle ages, and I listened with great interest and satisfaction to the remarks which he made upon that subject economic and those which followed. . . . But, sir, let me ask the gentle- unity. man if, filled with natural and proper pride in the great city which he represents, he has not taken a somewhat one-sided view of the relations of municipalities of the State to the State? The free cities of the middle ages stood by themselves, governed by themselves, but they undertook to exercise no power of governmental rights over others, and acknowledged no duties to others. The great cities of the State of New York can build no walls around their borders. They seclude themselves in the midst of no barriers between themselves and their fellow-citizens of the State. They undertake to furnish to us, and acknowledge their obligations under the law to all of us from Montauk to the State line in Lake Erie, the great market, the great centre of education, of recreation, of business, the centre commercially, financially, politically, around which revolve, and from which throb and pulse the life currents of a State which is a political, social, commercial and financial unit.

Cities and state and national politics.

Now, sir, the city which the gentleman represents undertakes to cast votes which will determine who shall be the presidential electors of the State of New York, to cast votes which shall determine who shall be the Governor of the State of New York, to send representatives to the Senate and Assembly, whose votes will outweigh those of any less number from any other part of the State of New York, in determining the policy and the law for the whole State. That city cannot cut herself off. from the rest of the State. That city cannot put herself in the position of a free city of the middle ages with a wall around her, governing herself exclusively; or if she does, she secedes from the State and becomes a city by herself. And against that or any amendment or law which provides for that, I rise now to protest. No, sir. The cities of the State, while properly claiming that they should be exempted from undue interference with their private affairs, nevertheless must admit the right of the people of a State to which they belong and to which they owe allegiance, equally with the smallest hamlet, to see that the great bureau of police in which every citizen is interested, that the exercise of the elective franchise in which every citizen is interested remain under the domination of the law of the State. One is correlative to the other. The two must go hand in hand, and I understand, sir, that the attempt of this committee has been to put into the measure which they have reported, on the one hand, a just exemption from undue interference in purely private and local matters in the city, and on the other hand, the assertion and the protection of the higher right of the people of the great State of New York to preserve her autonomy, her political independence, her political unity and the rights of all her people by control over those governmental functions in the city, which are the proper province of the general government. . . .

199. Popular Charter Drafting

California, in common with some other states, has attempted to solve the vexed question of municipal home rule by establish

ing in the constitution of the state these provisions authorizing cities which have over a certain population to formulate their own system of government:

Sec. 8. Any city containing a population of more than three thousand five hundred inhabitants may frame a charter for its own government, consistent with and subject to the Constitution [or re-frame a charter], by causing a board of fifteen freeholders, who shall have been for at least five years qualified electors thereof, to be elected by the qualified voters of the said city, at any general or special election, whose duty it shall be, within ninety days after such election, to prepare and propose a charter for such city, which shall be signed in duplicate by the members of such board, or a majority of them, and returned, one copy to the Mayor thereof, or other chief executive officer of such city, and the other to the Recorder of the county.

How the

charter is

drafted.

and ratifi

cation.

Such proposed charter shall then be published in two daily news- Publication papers of general circulation in such city, for at least twenty days and the first publication shall be made within twenty days after the completion of the charter; provided, that in cities containing a population of not more than ten thousand inhabitants such proposed charter shall be published in one such daily newspaper; and within not less than thirty days after such publication it shall be submitted to the qualified electors of said city at a general or special election and if a majority of such qualified electors voting thereon shall ratify the same, it shall thereafter be submitted to the Legislature for its approval or rejection as a whole, without power of alteration or amendment. Such approval may be made by concurrent resolution, and if approved by a majority vote of the members elected to each house it shall become the charter of such city, or if such city be consolidated with a county, then of such city and county, and shall become the organic law thereof, and supersede any existing charter, . . . all amendments thereof, and all laws inconsistent with such charter. A copy of such charter, certified by the Mayor or chief executive officer, and authenticated by the seal of such city, setting forth the submission of such charter to the

Amendment

of the charter.

Classes of cities.

Special city laws.

electors, and its ratification by them, shall, after the approval of such charter by the Legislature, be made in duplicate, and deposited, one in the office of the Secretary of State, and the other, after being recorded in said Recorder's office, shall be deposited in the archives of the city, and thereafter all courts shall take judicial notice of said charter.

The charter, so ratified, may be amended, at intervals of not less than two years, by proposals therefor, submitted by the legislative authority of the city to the qualified electors thereof, at a general or special election, held at least forty days after the publication of such proposals for twenty days in a daily newspaper of general circulation in such city, and ratified by a majority of the electors voting thereon, and approved by the Legislature as herein provided for the approval of the charter. Whenever fifteen per cent. of the qualified voters of the city shall petition the legislative authority thereof to submit any proposed amendment or amendments to said charter to the qualified voters thereof for approval, the legislative authority thereof must submit the same. In submitting any such charter, or amendments thereto, any alternative article or proposition may be presented for the choice of the voters, and may be voted on separately without prejudice to others.

200. The New York Check on the Legislature

New York has sought to find the middle ground between local autonomy and state centralization by the following constitutional provision:

All cities are classified according to the latest state enumeration, as from time to time made, as follows: The first class includes all cities having a population of one hundred and seventy-five thousand or more; the second class, all cities having a population of fifty thousand and less than one hundred and seventy-five thousand; the third class, all other cities.

Laws relating to the property, affairs of government of cities, and the several departments thereof, are divided into general and