ble of new ideas as soon as they were seen to be good ideas. As soon as the average American can be made to see a practical advantage gained by a new way of administration, he will insist upon getting his money's worth. City government is the place where the plain citizen can be most easily made to feel this advantage. It deals with matters of his daily comfort and safety, and its direction by trained public servants would affect each citizen every day. It is the easiest place in which to teach the first lessons in civil-service reform.

Again, it will be said that this permanence of tenure, even if practicable, would bring with it new dangers of its own. Would it not tend to load a city with a staff of life officials who might be lazy and indifferent to public welfare because not subject to public opinion? This danger is certainly real. Any appointment made for a long term is a serious matter. An incompetent or indolent man once fairly established in office may for a long time retard reform. We feel this seriousness when in the United States we elect judges for life or when the governor appoints them. But this very seriousness of the case is likely to give us better men. Elections for short terms are so unimportant that we put up with any candidate not likely to do much harm; elections for long terms bring a new sense of responsibility to every voter. Moreover, we must compare the possible risk with the present one. Under the German system we should get, as the Germans do, an occasional failure; under our present system we get an occasional and accidental success. The uncertain tenure of city work repels the best men; the possibility of a career would invite them. The risk is inherent in the case. When a professor is appointed in a college or the directors of a bank elect a president, they have to run the same risk, and that is what makes them careful. You cannot get a good man without offering him a good place, and you cannot make this offer without risking a mistake. Still further, this risk may be in some degree met by checks and restrictions. The aldermen of Dresden are, as I have said, elected from those who have already proved their capacity elsewhere, and each is elected for three years, in which term he is again tested. Each is responsible to a Council which is constantly refreshed by the direct votes of the citiThe salaried officers are a minority of their own board. They are, as it were, cabinet officers with seats and votes in the legislative house. These and other similar checks would readily occur to the American mind, and the whole system has the possibility of a gradual and cautious beginning.

zens.

One other form of danger might be anticipated-the risk which many Americans feel in the present tendency to increase the functions of government. Over against the movement in America known as nationalism, which is urging the extension of these functions, there are many who cannot forget the American tradition of personal and business liberty and who dread any inroad of German paternalism. To this objection I should reply, first of all, that for my own part I do not much care what school of philosophy lays claim to a plan of city work, provided that the plan is a good one. Whether a city should do certain pieces of work itself, instead of letting the job out, appears to me the same simple question of practical efficiency which almost every manager of a large business has to settle from day to day in dealing with his agents and brokers. It makes a small foundation for a general political philosophy. Indeed, the very title of nationalism, as given to a party dealing chiefly with municipal affairs, confuses two distinct things. The maxims which apply to city government are by no means the same as those which apply to national affairs. A national government is involved in international relations; it has national ideals, a theory of the tariff, views of personal liberty to perpetuate, and national parties divide on these great issues. A city government, on the other hand, is a matter of drains and water, of street-sweeping and fire-engines, of cleanliness and health-things about which no political philosophy is needed. The only question which concerns these functions is how to get this work well done.

Still further, so far as concerns this danger-if it may be called a real danger of enlarging the functions of a city government, I should wish especially to emphasize that it is not involved in the question before us. The plan which I have described does not necessarily imply an increase of functions at all. It is only a plan for doing better the work which is already being done. The cities already have large business functions. They spend vast sums, but on principles which no good citizen would permit in his private affairs. The nationalist precisely reverses the right order of reform. He asks that while city government is thus ill-administered we should give it still more to do, taking, as Mr. Spencer has said, the ten talents from the wise servants and giving them to the unprofitable one. The right order of reform would seem to be the opposite. First, establish city work on business principles and under expert agents; let the work which the city already does be thoroughly well done, and then, perhaps, extend that work. Cleanse the inside of the cup and platter,

and then it will be time enough to consider what new provision they can be made to hold.

Finally, it will be objected to such a business system in cities that it is un-American. Permanent tenure seems to have something monarchical, aristocratic, European about it. It will be said to create an oligarchy of office-holders. The American system gives every man a chance at the offices. Turn about is fair play. Any American is fit for any office. Why should a country so prosperous as ours learn lessons in government from the effete monarchies of the old world, while the people of those declining countries are emigrating in thousands to our better land? This is in reality nothing but the politician's view of the case. The present situation is merely that of a political "pool." The "workers" of both parties are inside, and the mass of tax-payers are outside. The politicians differ as to which of their two groups shall have the offices, but are agreed that it shall be one group or the other. They have even so far wrested city business from its natural method as to make it seem a necessary part of national politics, and they would, no doubt, say with perfect sincerity: "If city government is not to be a matter of party caucuses and deals, how are we to run the country? How shall party voters be made? How is the public heart to be kept warm for national elections? What is to become of the American system of government?" As if Germany, because she has no city politics, had any lack of national politics and did not find plenty of clear issues for party divisions and plenty of warmth in party debates. Meantime, with us, the public at large is paying for this little game of city politics which has no more place in city business than in a bank or in a mill. When some peculiar gross foulness of streets or some especially grave neglect of sanitary precaution occurs, the American public rebels; but for the most part it goes about its business and leaves the city to be the instrument of party ends. And what is it which, in this state of affairs, keeps city administration from absolute disaster? It is, we should remember, the unacknowledged and unofficial existence among us of the very system which I have described and which the politicians would call un-American-a body of permanent and trained departmental servants, serving through a series of administrations and really doing the work which the temporary officials are supposed to do. Each city and each department of a city has this staff-city treasurers, city engineers, city auditors, and the rest-whose permanence of tenure is absolutely essential to progressive administration. How can a committee of city

aldermen, one of whom has been all his life a stock-broker, and one a liquor-dealer and one a man of leisure, deal scientifically in the single year of their service with great questions like that of a system of sewerage or of electric motors? They must depend on the expert advice to be found in the city departments or to be procured by the city for the emergency. All that the German system proposes is the official and secure establishment of a principle which is even now prac tically accepted. Why should not these experts, on whom we now depend for the administration of the city, have safe positions instead of being in the hands of men who are using city business for political ends? Why should private corporations, by offering permanent tenure, get better servants than the larger and richer corporations of American cities as a rule secure? Why not, in short, have this business done as it is done in other civilized countries? The American people, who are certainly the quickest-witted of the nations, will not long be so dull as to keep a protective tariff on our way of municipal work for the sake of party politics. It may be a wise policy for us to shut out of the country the importation of good Saxon stockings, but at least we might have free trade in good Saxon ideas.

5

FRANCIS G. PEABODY.

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS OF THE SOUTH.

A PURELY statistical statement of the great growth of the South during the past fifteen years, in wealth, in manufactures, in mining and in productions of field, forest, and farm, will compare favorably, both as to progress and to promise of future achievement, with similar records of any other portion of our country. But mere statistics can tell but a small part of the real story, and indicate nothing of the emphasis which its details give to the promise of future industrial wealth.

The boundaries, of what is generally known as the South, may be more sharply defined than is usual with industrial subdivisions of a continent inhabited by a single people. They include that portion of the country from Maryland to the Rio Grande which was the theatre of war for the four years 1861-1865, and, except the States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, the theatre of a reconstruction, which exercised very unfavorable influences upon industrial development, for several years longer. The war, moreover, was peculiarly a war of devastation. It was often the distinct policy of the invading armies to destroy, not only railroads, bridges, factories, and all munitions of war, but even all provisions, barns, farming implements, domestic animals, and fences, and generally to reduce the district marched over, to such a condition "that a crow flying over it would have to carry his rations." Meanwhile the "cradle and the grave" were robbed to furnish food for powder, and to keep up resistance to the bitter end of unconditional surrender after utter exhaustion.

When the last fragments of the southern army returned on foot to what homes were left them, there being no railroads to carry them, there was apparently about as little left the South for a fresh start as ever a people began with. But the progress from that beginning during the short period since has been so great as to make plain that what was left possessed peculiar merit. What was left consisted principally of the climate and the soil. Geographical location with reference to other producing sections of the country, which will