Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/674

Rh more closely together, and has led to the eclipsing of political issues confined to a state by issues which are matters of controversy throughout the nation.

The second cause is the Civil War of 1861–65, which practically negatived the far-reaching claims of state sovereignty and the right of secession made by statesmen of the type of Calhoun, and showed that the nation was really much stronger than any group of states.

The third is the enormous development of swift and cheap communications by land and water, and the growth of commerce and of productive industry, which have brought every part of the country into much closer relations with every other part, and have increased the sense of economic solidarity.

§ 10. During the entire history of the United States there has been a considerable area within the jurisdiction of the Federal government not included in that of any one or more of the states; and the systems of government for the various parts of this area require some description.

The Territories (strictly so called) were at one time important, though now less so, because there remain only two, the unorganized Territory or District of Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Till 1910 there were the two organized Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, but in that year Congress passed an act for their admission as states. Previously to that year there had been ever since 1787 a large area of the continent which, while belonging to the United States, was deemed too thinly peopled to be fit to be divided up into states. Parts of this area were, however, set off and organized as Territories, receiving a qualified form of self government while under the ultimate control of Congress for the purposes of legislation. When these parts had been sufficiently filled up by settlers, they were allowed to organize themselves as states, each giving itself a constitution. The Territorial government consisted of a legislature of two houses elected by the people, with a governor appointed by the president of the United States, with the consent of the Senate, and judges similarly appointed. The Territories were not represented in Congress, but each could send a delegate to the House of Representatives, who could speak there but not vote.

Since the Spanish War of 1898 there have been added to the United States various transmarine dominions, none of which has been formed into a state, or is likely to be so formed for a good while to come; and there is also one small piece of original area of the United States, viz. the District of Columbia, which is outside any state, because it contains the national capital. The trans marine dominions are Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Porto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and the Canal Zone on the Isthmus of Panama.

§ 11. Every state in the Union has its own system of local administrative areas and local authorities, working under its own laws, these systems agreeing in many points with one another, and differing in many others. Three main types of rural local government may be

distinguished, prevailing in different regions. The first is characterized by its unit, the town or township, and exists in the six New England states. The second is characterized by a much larger unit, the county, and prevails in the southern states. The third may be called the mixed system, combining some features of the first with some of the second, and is found under a considerable variety of forms in the middle and north-western states. The different types spring from the original differences in the character of the colonists who settled on the Atlantic coast, and in the conditions under which the various colonial communities developed. (See American Commonwealth, chs. xlvii. and xlix.)

The town, or township, of New England is generally a rural community occupying a comparatively small area, and with a population averaging about 3000, but ranging from 200 in newly-settled districts or thinly-peopled hilly districts up to 17,000 in the vicinity of large cities and in manufacturing neighbourhoods. Each town is governed by the town meeting, an assembly of all the qualified

voters within the limits, which meets at least once a year in the spring, and also at other times when specially summoned. This assembly elects the town officials at the annual meetings, but it is much more than an electoral body. It is also a deliberative assembly and the legislative authority for local matters. It enacts by-laws and ordinances, receives the reports of the local officials, passes their accounts, manages the town property, votes appropriations for each item of expenditure, and authorizes the necessary taxation. Every resident citizen has the right to bring forward and to speak in favour of any proposal. The meeting is presided over by a chairman called the moderator. In rural communities the attendance is usually good, the debates are sensible and practical, and a satisfactory administration is generally secured. But when the town meeting has grown to exceed seven or eight hundred persons, and especially when the farming class of native American stock has been replaced by factory operatives of other nationalities, the institution works far less perfectly.

The town officials consist of the “selectmen” (usually three, five or seven, sometimes nine), the town clerk, treasurer, assessors, tax collector, school committee men, and the holders of divers minor offices according to local needs. These are elected annually, except that in some cases the “selectmen” and school committee have a term of several years, one member of each board being elected annually. The “selectmen,” who receive no regular salary, but may charge for expenses actually incurred, form a sort of directory or executive committee, which manages the ordinary administrative and financial business under such instructions as may have been given by the town meeting.

In the Middle and Western states the township is a more artificial organism than the rural town of New England. In one group of states—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa—while the township has more or less power, and there are town officials, there is no town meeting. In another group—Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the two Dakotas—the town meeting reappears, though in a less primitive and less perfect form. In the states west of the Alleghanies each township covers an artificial area 6 m. square, and a separate quasi-municipal organization is usually provided for the villages which have grown up in many townships.

The county is to be found in every state of the Union, but its importance varies inversely with the position held in the system of local government by that smaller and older organism, the town. In New England the county was originally an aggregation of towns for judicial purposes, and in that part of the Union it is still in the main a judicial district. There is no general representative council or board, but judicial officers, a sheriff and a clerk, are elected in each county, and also a county treasurer and county commissioners. The latter have the management of county buildings, such as courthouses and prisons, have power to lay out new main highways, to grant licences, and to apportion among the towns and cities the taxation necessary to meet county expenses. Besides these officials there are generally to be found in New England a county school superintendent and an overseer of roads. In the Southern states the county is the local administrative unit, and in addition to its original judicial and financial functions it has now also control over public schools, the care of the poor and the construction and management of roads. County government is generally vested in a board of county commissioners, elected (in almost every state) by the people, and in various officials also directly elected. In some Southern states some counties have been subdivided into school districts, each of which elects a school committee, and from this nucleus there may possibly develop something resembling the New England town. In those Middle and Western states where the town meeting is not found, the functions and officials of the county tend to resemble those existing in the Southern states, while even in those parts of the west where tire town meeting is found the county remains more important than in New England. Thus in many of these states poor relief is a county and not a town charge. In most states' county administration belongs to a small board of three commissioners elected for the county at large, but in New York, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin there is a larger board of supervisors elected by townships and cities within each county. Although local affairs do not now enlist, even in New England, so large a measure of interest and public spirit as the town system used to evoke in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut in the thirties, still, broadly speaking, the rural local government of America may be deemed satisfactory. The administration is fairly cheap and fairly efficient, most so, on the whole, in the Northern and Western states, while jobbery and corruption are uncommon. The value of local self-government as a training for the duties of citizenship has been very great, and in many parts of the country, especially where the funds dealt with are small, elections are not fought and offices not distributed upon party lines.

§ 12. The tendency, now so marked in nearly all civilized countries, to the development of urban communities has been nowhere more marked than in the United States. The increase in the range and importance of municipal functions has been not less striking than the growth of urban

population. This can best be illustrated by the figures of municipal