monitions of the statesman of Mount Vernon-of whom it was happily said that God left him childless that he might be a father to his country-and of the sage of Monticello-the framer of that first great charter of our liberty-the Declaration of Independence.

And how sadly accurate have proven their prognostications of the envenomed possibilities of wrong embryonic in the nature of partisanship and of party spirit. And for this great evil what remedy shall be suggested?

Is there needed more than a recurrence to the fundamentals of unselfish patriotism and disinterested regard for the common weal, at the sacrifice, if need be, of personal ambition, and by the subordination of self-seeking, so eloquently preached and consistently practised by these and other fathers of the republic?

As a prime, essential step to the dissipation of this misleading spirit of party devotion, possibly no better course can be indicated than that pointed out with characteristic bluntness by Dr. Johnson. "Clear your minds of cant," said he. And the mind that is not clear of the hypocritical cant that blind, unswerving

allegiance to partisan dictation is to be confused with or ranked as any form of patriotism whatever, is in no condition to be receptive to the true teachings of the gospel of altruism in government or to be usefully active in its propaganda. To a mind in such condition of moral fog may well be applied the full definitive force of that other seldge-hammer deliverence of the learned doctor when he remarked, apropos of a certain controversy, that he could furnish facts but could not supply understanding.

But to the citizen, clear in his conception of public duty, conscientious in his attitude toward his fellows and toward the State, anxious only that the right shall prevail, and that our democratic institutions shall be restored in full vigor to their primal virtue, no spur will be needed save the urgent solicitation of his own civic rectitude to induce him who rejoices in his sovereignty as a freeman to refuse to be bound in the degradation of mere partisan enthrallment. Sons of liberty should be the masters rather than the serfs of political instrumentalities and agencies. C. VEY HOLMAN. "Holman Oaks," Rockland, Me.

IN

N HOUSTON the conditions which led to the forming of the commission style of government were not dramatic and calamitous as they were in Galveston. Here it was the story of all of our American cities, the incompetency of political grafters, corruptionists, petty ward schemers. The people were disgusted with the political régime. Quarreling, fussing, stealing, incompetency, corruption, fostering of vice, favoritism,

sinecurism, had made the better class ready for almost any change that gave hope, in ever so small a degree, of better things. Taxes were collected and spent and there were no tangible results. If anything needed to be done, the citizens were told that it could be accomplished only by the issuance of bonds, and bonds were voted, and the money collected and spent, and then, often, the work promised was not half done. There was the

ordinary government of mayor and city council. The city was divided into six wards, from each of which two aldermen were elected. The population numbered some 60,000, and though business seemed good and taxation was high and well collected, the city seemed to be povertystricken as far as any civic improvement was concerned. Every administration was in a state of chronic fight with the water company and had been for twenty years, and the general belief in the city was that no measure pertaining to that company could ever pass the council without the expenditure of boodle money. Union labor also seemed to have a deadly grip upon everything. No one save a union man could get a job and contractors had to "stand in" with the labor men if they wished to obtain business. The city hall was swarming with inspectors. Everything and everbody had to be inspected "in the interests of labor." There was a carpenter inspector, a plumbing inspector, a painter's rope inspector, a boiler inspector, a tin can, weights and measures inspector, a milk inspector, and a gardener's market inspector. Everyone was out for graft" and the police were worse than the inspectors. It was clearly proven that one of the sergeants of police was a "capper" for a gang of gamblers. A young and wealthy student of the State University came to Houston, was piloted by this official scoundrel to one of the gambling dens, where he was speedily fleeced of a large sum. When he came to his sober senses he decided to 'make a kick," and he kicked so vigorously and had so large an influence that even the corrupt chief was compelled to pay attention to it and dismiss his grafting and criminal subordinate. One of the chiefs of police was also well known to have made it a practice to collect revenue of $16 each monthly from the keepers of houses of prostitution in order to guarantee them against interference. No man could get on the police force or into the fire department without political pull.

In the city courts things were equally bad. By far the larger portion of all fees and fines collected went to the judge, clerk and bailiffs or constables. As one citizen expressed it: "If some fellow was fined $8.45 for some wrong he had done, the judge who fined him got $4 of it, the clerk $2, the constables $2, and the city the forty-five cents.".

The city's poverty was so great that it Icould not even feed the horses of its fire department. The men of fire and police departments and the school teachers and other city employés were often kept for months without their salaries, and city warrants were hawked up and down the streets and sold at 75 to 80 cents on the dollar. At one time the city was SO behind in payment of interest on its obligations that the bondholders threatened to appeal to the federal courts for redress.

In the council there were the ordinary ward politicians, each looking out for his own ward and totally and utterly regardless of the larger needs of the whole city. Each man made it his business to see that "his ward" got its full share of money, whether needed or not. Local patriotism was the catch-word for looting the city treasury, and graft, graft, graft reigned supreme.

This was the state of affairs (and by no means exaggerated in the telling) up to a little over two years ago, when the observant among the citizens began to sit up and take notice of the way Galveston was doing things. The commission there was born of Galveston's great calamity, but it was accomplishing so much good in so many ways that the Houstonites felt they might pattern after their neighbors who were making great civic good come out of a great disaster. A committee of investigation was appointed to thoroughly study the workings of the Galveston commission, grasp its spirit and methods, and then report. The report was made in due time and resolved itself into a hearty endorsement of the Galveston plan and an urgent recommendation that Houston amend its charter and seek to

follow suit. The charter was revised and submitted to the last legislature (the Twenty-ninth, which met in 1905), and, though it met with the bitter and determined opposition of the old political ring, it was duly granted.

The important point in the new charter is found in Article V., which is as follows:

"SECTION 1. Elective Officers.-The administration of the business affairs

of the City of Houston shall be conducted by a Mayor and four Aldermen, who, together, shall be known and designated as the City Council, each and all of whom shall be elected by the qualified voters of the city at large, and who shall hold their respective offices for two years from and after the next city election, or until their successors are elected and qualified, unless sooner removed, as is provided by this act; provided, however, that all of the present officers of the City of Houston, who were elected at a city election held in said city, on the fourth day of April, A. D. 1904, pursuant to the provisions of an act passed by the Twentyeighth Legislature of the State of Texas, entitled: An Act to provide a charter for the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas, repealing all laws or parts of laws in conflict herewith, and declaring an emergency'; except the Mayor, Aldermen and City Attorney, shall hold their respective offices, unless sooner removed by the Mayor for cause, and receive the compensation now fixed therefor, until the expiration of two years from and after the date of their election on the fourth day of April, 1904, and qualification thereunder.

"Compensation of all officers, except the Mayor and Aldermen, shall be fixed by the City Council, which may increase or diminish the same at will, or abolish entirely any office at any time, except as to the officers above mentioned, and until their two years' terms of offices expires. "In case a primary election is held pursuant to the call or under the direction

of any political party, or of any association of individuals for the nomination of candidates for the offices of Mayor and Aldermen, the candidates or persons voted for in said primary election shall be voted for at large by all of the legally qualified voters in said city, it being the purpose of this act to nominate and elect at large in said city the Mayor and Aldermen, without restricting the nomination of candidates for either position to any smaller designated territory within the limits of said city, and any primary election held for the purpose of nominating candidates who shall stand for election at a city election in said city at which said primary the candidates for Mayor and Aldermen are not voted for, as herein provided, shall be absolutely illegal, and no person so nominated at said primary election shall be eligible to election at a general election, nor shall he hold an office if elected thereto after nomination in a primary wherein the voters at large in said city did not participate in said primary election.

"SEC. 2. Appointive Officers. — The Mayor shall have power to appoint, subject to confirmation by the City Council, such heads of departments in the administrative service of the city as may be created by ordinance, and shall have power to appoint and remove all officers or employés in the service of the city for cause, whenever in his judgment the public interests demand or will be better subserved thereby; and no officer whose office is created by ordinance shall hold the same for any fixed term, but shall always be subject to removal by the Mayor, or may be removed by the City Council. In case of such removal, if the officer or employé so removed requests it, the Mayor or City Council, as the case may be, shall file in the public archives of the city a written statement of the reason for which the removal was made."

The city election now took place under the provisions of the new charter, and

again a battle royal was fought in which all the old political gang with its disorderly and grafting horde of followers, engaged with the desperation born of the consciousness that it was a life and death struggle for them. The people, however, had their eyes well opened. They were tired of the old methods. They saw a chance, at least, for a bettering of conditions. They determined to risk it, and by a large majority voted for the ticket presented by those who had all along favored the commission. For, of course, the grafters had their ticket in the field, determined if they could not suck the milk of the golden calf from the twelve teats, to try to secure the four which the new commission was restricted to.

Thus, at "one fell swoop" the old ward lines were swept away and four business men were elected, at whose hands the citizens required the organization and conducting of the city's business in an ordinarily efficient and business-like manner. The mayor and four commissioners were men who had proved themselves reasonably successful in the conduct of their own affairs. The mayor, H. B. Rice, was a well known and successful capitalist, born and raised in Houston. J. Z. Gaston was a machinist by trade, but failing health led him to take up the dry goods business, in which he was doing well when called upon to enter the commission. He was somewhat of a politician and was for four years a member of the old administration. But it was a known fact to all the citizens that he stood practically alone. He was always fighting a losing fight against the political tricksters and grafters. J. A. Thompson, the second member, is a well known capitalist. James Appleby, the third member, was a railway man who later engaged in the real estate business; and J. B. Marmion, the fourth member, conducts a large blacksmith business.

Here, then, were the five men to whom the city's interests were entrusted. The charter gave the citizens the power of removing the mayor and provided that

"the council may remove at any time any alderman by majority vote, for inattention to the affairs of the city, misconduct, or any grounds sufficient in judgment of the council for removal." The first work that devolved upon the commission was the organizing of the city's business affairs. This was done by placing Gaston at the head of the finance and revenue departments; Thompson at the head of the water, light and health departments; Appleby at the head of the police and fire departments; and Marmion at the head of the streets, bridges and public grounds; the mayor having general supervision of the whole.

Now began the work of elimination of politicians from the rank and file of the city employés. Numbers of men were found holding office purely because they had political “pull” or influence. Many of them did not do enough work in a month to entitle them to a day's pay. Mercilessly, and so promptly that the headsman's basket could not hold them, the heads of these parasites were cut off. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth, and it was astonishing the number of men who were quickly seeking work elsewhere. Of course such action engendered a great deal of enmity, but the good citizens rejoiced and the taxpayers grimly smiled when the beheaded ones picked their heads out of the basket and began to curse and swear, and-find laboring jobs fitted to their capacity.

Everything was speedily reduced to business principles, for, though ostensibly the council or commission works as a whole, in fact each commissioner is put in absolute charge of the work of his departments and is held personally responsible for it, except in cases involving large expenditures or where the larger advice of the whole board is deemed desirable. The mayor annually makes his budget and the amounts appropriated for each department are handed over to each commissioner, and he is held responsible for the expenditure of them.

Each commissioner, therefore, hoes his own row, and if any of his employés fail to measure up to his standard they can be instantly removed. The charter confers this power. Every commissioner therefore stands before the public as responsible for the incompetents of his own department, and it has worked like a charm. There are no incompetents. Consequently working expenses have been reduced to the lowest possible minimum consistent with efficiency.

From the report recently issued (March, 1907) I learn that when the commission began operations it found a floating debt of some $400,000 that had been hanging over the city for years-in less than one year this debt was all paid-paid out of the ordinary income of the city. Taxes were $2.00. They are now reduced to $1.80. In talking with the citizens I gleaned scores of most interesting facts, all of which would make instructive reading. Here is what a plumber told me, a man of high integrity and sturdy character.

"We used to do a lot of work for the city under the old régime. The city engineer was a good friend of ours and turned lots of work our way, sometimes as much as $3,000 or more a month. But when the work was done we had to wait fifteen or eighteen months for our pay, and not being large capitalists the only way we could do was to turn over our bills to banks and pay them interest, on our own money, until the city could pay. Now of course we did n't propose to do this kind of business on a cash basis, and we did as everybody else did, viz., charged the city fifteen to twenty-five per cent. more than a cash price. But now that the grafters are out of the way, when we do work for the city we have to put in our bid against that of others, and if we do the work, the controller sends us word on the tenth or thereabouts of the following month that our bills are audited and he is ready to pay the cash." Then he continued: "But now the city has its own men and they do the major part of

the work we used to do themselves, and all at a less cost to the city than we had to pay for the old gang of incompetents. And then another thing let me tell you," said he: "For years we 've been struggling to get the three bridges that cross the bayou in the heart of the city fixed up. They were rattlety-bang old affairs, liable to fall in at any time, and the street-railways were always patching them up because of the city's inability or refusal to do the work. Whenever the cry became too loud, the politicians hushed us with the threat that nothing could be done without another bond issue. And there we were, But when this crowd came in they rebuilt the three bridges with their own labor, and have fixed up and put in good order the twelve other bridges that belong to the city."

In addition to the payment of the $400,000 of floating indebtedness, the city has built from its current income three new and handsome school-houses at a cost of $106,000.

It has paved a number of streets with vitrified brick, laid much sewer and generally improved the sewer system. It has bought a fifteen-acre park and paid $55,000 cash for it. It was then decided to put a stop to the squabbling boodling and inefficiency of twenty years connected with the water system, and the city voted to buy the water-works. The cost was $901,000. Of this amount $467,000 was a mortgage which the city assumed, the balance being paid by a bond issue. The bonds were immediately sold, and the proceeds used to purchase the stock of the water company. The result is that the city itself now owns the water-works, and all profits will henceforth go to the betterment of the system. There are no expensive officers to pay, no political grafters to purchase, no privileges to buy. Naturally the city can operate cheaper than any private corporation, because it is not hampered by political intriguers who place obstacles in the way of needed work and who require to be bought off, or compel the company to pay higher