Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/551

 A YEAR'S MUNICIPAL DEVELOPMENT 537

has shown itself a valuable safeguard against extravagance and corruption. The experience of the past year in Baltimore has been, on the whole, decidedly encouraging to reformers.

In Greater New York a charter commission, appointed by Governor Roosevelt, is at work devising ways and means to correct the defects and evils of the charter of 1897. That instru- ment was necessarily somewhat of an experiment along certain lines, and only a very few years have been needed to develop its weak points.

There has been no serious setback during the past year for the cause of municipal civil-service reform except in New Orleans. There the excellent law of 1896 has been subjected to a process of emasculation by the machine and the system reduced to that of Philadelphia. That is to say, certain of the elective officials who are also appointing officers have been constituted the civil- service board, with power to make rules and regulations. The result will be what it has been in Philadelphia a travesty on civil- service reform. In the latter city during the present administra- tion the mayor's choices, selected and announced, in some cases, months beforehand, have been passed with averages of 100. All that can be said of the Philadelphia and New Orleans system is that it keeps out the very worst applicants. It does not represent any substantial barrier to an unscrupulous official or machine. The constitutionality of the New Orleans changes has, however, been questioned and is now pending in the courts.

In Chicago the politicians have been foiled in their attempts to throttle and eliminate the merit system. The Democratic party a year ago specifically declared against it and lost the election. Within six months it changed its attitude, and the enforcement of the law has been placed in the hands of a friendly commission. The constitutionality and popularity of the system established, it begins to look as if it had become a fixture.

In New York the Roosevelt act is justly regarded as a long step in advance and by far the most satisfactory piece of legis- lation on the subject thus far enacted. In New York city as in Chicago it looks as if civil-service reform had come to stay.