Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/98

 82 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

responsibility which we cannot throw off. The complexity of organization that has resulted from this attempt to secure effi- ciency and honesty through statutes rather than through men has done more than any other influence to retard municipal progress.

The problem presented by city government in the United States is not merely to construct a well-balanced mechanism of government, but so to construct that government that it will require the alertness and watchfulness of the people. The situa- tion in Philadelphia is an instructive instance of the effect of so organizing the government as to leave the people under the impression that the officials are sufficiently encompassed with statutory limitations to have little power for evil. With a bicameral council, a mayor whose appointments are subject to the approval of the upper branch of the local legislative body, and such important services as the control of education vested in a board appointed by the local judiciary, authority is split to such an extent that the people believe that no one official or group of officials enjoys sufficient power to work much harm. We fail to appreciate the fact that this splitting of authority means that har- mony can be secured only by gathering these loose threads in the hands of some person or group of persons who, while not officially recognized in the organization of government, exercise the real governmental power.

If the foregoing discussion has served any purpose, it has shown that industrial and social organization in the United States is tending toward an increasing concentration of executive and administrative power, and that this movement has been accom- panied by a corresponding increase in efficiency. In the organiza- tion of our municipalities the fear of absolutism has led us to offer considerable resistance to a plan of organization whose value is no longer questioned in other departments of organized effort. The partial and unwilling recognition of this principle has led to a series of makeshifts which have failed to give satisfactory results. Instead of giving the mayor complete control over the administra- tive work of the city, we have, in most cases, hampered his powers of appointment, making them subject to the approval of the council. The unfortunate compromises which this system has