Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 06.djvu/409

LEFT MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 347 MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP States municipal government is based on the theory that the State supersedes the city in authority, and that the city gov- ernment derives its authority from the State, rather than directly from its citizens. As a result of this centraliza- tion of power there has been much abuse. As an instance, while the city of New York has invariably been Democratic in its party affiliations, the State govern- ment quite as invariably is controlled by the Republican politicians in the rural sections of the State. Thus Republican policies and appointees were forced upon a large metropolis with interests different from those of other sections of the State, and with problems of its own. As a result of this condition, obtaining in all parts of the country, there has arisen a strong movement for municipal home rule, the aim of which is to secure for the lai-ger towns and cities a larger degree of autonomy, based on special charter. Specifically the demand has been for the right of the citizens to pass ordinances, or laws, regulating matters pertaining solely to the life of the city. Local control of the police force is one of the points most emphasized. The pioneer of this movement was Prof. Frank J. Goodnow, who has written considerably on this subject. Many of the States of the Union have responded to this demand in varying degree. The first State to grant its municipalities the right to frame their own charters was Missouri, where the necessary amendments of the State con- stitution were passed as far back as 1875. Other States have followed in this order: California, 1879; Washington, 1889; New York, 1894; Minnesota, 1896; Oklahoma, 1907; Michigan, 1908; Ari- zona, 1912; Ohio, 1912; Nebraska, 1912; Texas, 1912. While based on more equitable prin- ciples, the granting of a broader home rule for municipalities has had one evil result in the greater amount of corrup- tion which has developed in the govern- ments of those cities which have been granted the right to frame their own charters. The notorious "muckraking" articles which were published in prom- inent magazines during several years, beginning with 1903, exposing the cor- ruption of municipal politics in some of the largest cities of the country, centered public attention on this evil. The opportunity for corruption lay in the fact that the heads of the various departments of city government were appointed by the mayor, and were there- fore not directly responsible to the elec- torate. To correct the evil, reform movements arose in many of the larger cities and a still greater number of the smaller towns and cities, which put into effect a new form of municipal government, known as the commission form of govern- ment. By this method the city is gov- erned by a small group, or commission, sometimes numbering only five men, each of whom is elected directly by the voters, and each of whom is responsible for a certain department of the city administration. The office of mayor is completely eliminated. In 1920 over seventy American municipalities had adopted this form of administration. MUNICIPAL MARKETS, marts for the buying and selling of foodstuffs con- trolled by the town or city. In primitive countries this consists of an open space within the municipality, where the farmers from the outlaying districts gather on certain days to sell their prod- uce to the tovmspeople. In modern cities and especially in this country municipal markets consists usually of well-equipped buildings let to private storekeepers, whose prices are more or less under con- trol, for the purpose of combating un- justified profit-making of the great body of food merchants of the city. During the war days in the United States, and especially since the close of the war, many cities have considered the advisa- bility of taking up the actual sale of foodstuffs in the markets as well, but this has not yet been widely practiced. The idea of the municipal market is still to provide an open market where producer and consumer may meet without the un- due intervention of middlemen. MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP, the own- ership, and usually the operation, _ of public services or industries by a munici- pality, on a non-profit-making basis. This is a question which within recent years has become the subject of much de- bate between those in favor of private industry as a fundamental principle and those in favor of the "socialization" of public service and industry. The practice of municipal ownership has made much more progress abroad than in the United States, more especially in Germany. There, in such cities as Berlin and Hamburg the principle has been extended to the ownership and op- eration by the city of such enterprises as housing, the slaughter of food animals and the preparation for the market of their meat and even, in some smaller cities, the production of field crops on communal land. In the United States municipal owner- ship has so far been almost entirely limited to the public utilities, and some-