Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/397

Rh government for the satisfaction of a local need, it must search the statutes for permission, and if the statutes are silent on the point, it must appeal to the state legislature for the requisite power. Thus, if a city in my own state of Indiana, for example, wishes to furnish ice to its citizens in the heat of summer, establish a pension fund for its teachers or institute a civil service test for its employees, it must make its humiliating appeal to the legislative Cæsar at Indianapolis; for these powers are not nominated in the bond. No wonder an exasperated Indiana city official was once led to remark that "the only creatures without rights under our law are outlaws, wild beasts and municipalities." Yet, that local communities shall have the fullest right of local self-government is a maxim of American institutions.

Not only must the city in the exercise of its enumerated powers keep strictly within the limits set by the state legislature, it must follow only such administrative methods as the legislature has prescribed. Even in the determination of the fundamental framework of their government the citizens have no legal voice. A certain city may desire the commission plan or the city manager plan; but, of its own action, it can not get what it wants. It must take what it gets from the state house, and in the large number of states of which I am writing it gets an antiquated form of city organization that renders increasingly difficult the municipal problem. And not only the general framework, but the minutest detail of the administrative machinery, is often prescribed by legislative act.

Generally the legislature groups the cities in classes according to their population, and then imposes a detailed plan of administrative organization and powers upon each class. This frequently means that a particular city is saddled with an administrative machinery ill-fitted to its local conditions, or with administrative methods ill-adapted to its local needs. Any one who is familiar with municipal conditions knows that even cities of the same general size often reveal the greatest diversity of conditions and needs, and that what is good for one city is often bad for another. Moreover, to imprison the city in the strait-jacket of uniform legislation checks its inventiveness, for it deprives it of the opportunity of wholesome experiment with municipal methods. It impairs its individuality, for it takes from it the chance to shape its own life and development. It lessens its sense of responsibility, for it relieves it of the responsibility of working out its own civic salvation. Common sense joins with the principle of local self-government in the demand that local institutions be permitted to conform to local conditions.

To meet the needs of modern social and economic development the American city without right of self-government is compelled by the state constitution to appeal at every turn to the legislature for relief; but that constitution never guarantees that the city's prayer