Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/759

 CONCERNING A MINOR REFORM IN INDIANA 74$

individual cases being on record. The results published in the reports of the board form wonderfully interesting reading.

Still many trustees, and some auditors, refused or neglected to make reports until in 1897 two far-reaching and salutary laws were enacted. One of these required each township to pay for its own poor, by a special township levy each year, sufficient to reimburse the county for the amount it had advanced. The second provided a method to compel officials to do their duty, by a simple and easy process of impeachment, before the ciicuit court of their county. Since that session of the legislature no official has needed more than a citation of the impeachment law to spur him up to making all reports that the laws require.

With the full particulars from every township furnished in 1897 and 1898, the facts began to show with sunlight clearness. It appeared that townships with conditions much alike varied enormously in the number of paupers relieved. In some, one person in every eight of the population received relief; in others only one person in 250 was on the poor books. The levy for poor relief in different townships varied from as low as 3 mills to as high as 30 cents on the $100 of valuation. The conviction became incontestable that the cause of these differ- ences anywhere, and of the excessive total everywhere, was to be sought in the varying efficiency of administration and nowhere else. This became so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.

So far in Indiana for very many years the township trustee had been almost a law unto himself. There has rarely been seen in a free government so striking an example of one-man power as was his before the reform acts of 1899. It was the trustee's duty to levy taxes and to spend them with little check upon him but that of public opinion. He had charge of the schools, the roads, the poor, and a multitude of other things. He made contracts, borrowed money, issued bonds, and did almost all that any government does, and almost without check or control. For four years he was a dictator. He appointed teachers and, with his fellow-trustees, elected the county super- intendent of schools. He nominated drainage commissioners and