Municipalism

“ With a growing intelligence and honesty in municipal enterprise, with greater freedom from the control of the Central Government, it may be found—especially on municipally-owned land—that the field of municipal activity may grow so as to embrace a very large area, and yet the municipality claim no rigid monopoly and the fullest rights of combination exist.
Bearing this in mind, the municipality of Garden City will, at the outset, exercise great caution, and not attempt too much. ”

“ Why do you suppose men went into the town council? To represent the taxpayers, the townspeople? No, but to look after their own interests; to safeguard themselves; to get what they could out of it. The whole policy of the old councils was one of—there's only one word for it, Mr. Brent, and that's only just becoming Anglicized—graft! A municipal government is supposed to exist for the good, the welfare, the protection of a town, but the whole idea of these Hathelsborough men, in the past, has been to use their powers and privileges for their own ends. ”

“ Let us make our own selections—or, rather, help our mayor to make hers—and show this town what can be done with an honest and sane council, every man of whom has at heart the framing of a model municipality and the development of an ideal city. ”

“ The rising municipalities on the other hand, even if they had a history but a century or two old, were endowed with all the young and vigorous forces of the modern world; nor is there a single instance of a town where a lively trade went hand in hand with a subservient spirit, or where a temper of unconquerable audacity in commercial enterprise did not throw its exuberant force into the region of government and politics. ”

“ In some of these respects, as in the exercise of the police power, the care of the public health, the administration of charity, and the administration of local justice, the municipality is actually the agent of the State, and discharges duties of interest to the State at large; in others, as in the furnishing of water or light, the State permits the community as a whole to act as a local organization for the satisfaction of purely local needs of interest to the community only. ”

“ With the new municipalities, a really autonomous and decentralized municipal government will be established in the towns, since no provincial assembly is created in the capitals of the provinces or districts, and each municipality is the legitimate administrator of the interests of its town, and will keep, preserve, and expend for the public welfare of the municipal funds. ”

“ The territorial legislature at least had the same authority as that possessed by congress to recognize claims of the nature described. It is a legislative power, and it was granted to the territorial legislature by the acts already referred to. A city is a municipal corporation and a political subdivision of the state, and, what the state could do itself, it has the power to direct its agent, the municipality, to do. ”

“ It is the municipality which makes the power and glory of the democracy in England and the United States, and despotism never triumphed on the European Continent till it had destroyed the municipality. The municipality is the political school of the people, it is the temple of their liberty, it is the citadel of their rights. Without the municipality, democracy can never be long maintained. ”

“ Just as the larger experiment is designed to lead the nation into a juster and better system of land tenure and a better and more common-sense view of how towns should be built, so are the various pro-municipal undertakings of Garden City devised by those who are prepared to lead the way in enterprises designed to further the well-being of the town, but who have not as yet succeeded in getting their plans or schemes adopted by the Central Council. ”

“ We are told that municipal government should be divorced from politics, and this is doubtless true. A municipality is primarily a business or engineering corporation. Its main concern is with streets, sewers, parks and docks ”

“ These are not under the control of the municipality, but are supported and managed by various public-spirited people who have been invited by the municipality to establish these institutions in an open healthy district, and on land let to them at a pepper-corn rent, it occurring to the authorities that they can the better afford to be thus generous, as the spending power of these institutions greatly benefits the whole community. ”

“ I shall not attempt in these pages a treatise on municipal government, for if the task were rightly executed, it would be a history of civilization. Non-partizanship in municipal elections, municipal ownership, home rule for cities,—who is interested in these? I have discussed them in interviews— (“Is there to be a statement for us this morning, Mr. Mayor?”) —and speeches numerous as autumn leaves, and like them, lost now in the winds to which they were given.
After all, it is life in which we are all interested. ”

“ Sometimes a borough threw its gates wide open and welcomed any new comer who would but choose one of the half-dozen avenues to citizenship that lay before him,—who would buy land, or marry a free woman, or pay the fixed price for his freedom, or serve his apprenticeship to a trade, or accept the franchise as a gift from the community; while a neighbouring town, looking on aliens with jealousy and hesitation, would close its doors and cling to some narrower system of enfranchisement [177] which kept its ranks pure from foreign blood, and its burghers free from anxieties of competition. ”

“ The city alone has anything really important to gain or to lose from their proper or improper treatment; and its legal responsibility should be as complete as its economic localization is real.
There is no need of discussing in any detail the way in which a municipal government which does enjoy the advantage of home rule and an efficient organization can contribute to the work of national economic and social reconstruction. Public opinion is tending to accept much more advanced ideas in this field of municipal reform than it is in any other part of the political battle-field. ”

“ If we wish to destroy the life of the city, make it impotent to discharge the functions for which it was organized, then, and then only, it might be feasible to place over it a commission.
But, Honorable Judges, authorities are agreed that cities must be allowed greater freedom of action in local affairs, that municipal home rule is indispensable. The governments of our large cities have been dominated to such an extent by the state legislatures, usually partisan and irresponsible to the locality concerned, that in many cases self-government has become a term, hollow and without meaning. ”

“ Whether the board of public works is also a part of and an agency of the municipal corporation is the question before us.
1. The authorities state, and our own knowledge is to the effect, that the care and superintendence of streets, alleys, and highways, the regulation of grades, and the opening of new and closing of old streets, are peculiarly municipal duties. No other power can so wisely and judiciously control this subject as the authority of the immediate locality where the work is to be done. ”

“ The city is organized, like the state government, on the plan of distributed powers and diffused responsibility. It contains, as a rule, an elaborate system of checks which affords little opportunity for the prompt and effective expression of local public opinion in the administration of municipal affairs. At the same time, it gives the municipal authorities power to inaugurate and carry out policies to which local public sentiment may be strongly opposed. This is seen in the control which the mayor and council quite generally exercise over the matter of municipal franchises. ”

“ How many municipalities in the countryside are not at the mercy of the lords, or of the priests, or of some notables! How many, in the small towns, are not dominated by the credit of the principal townspeople! Let us expect nothing from these administrations that are too weak to remain independent; the only way to emancipate municipal authority is to distribute it in larger masses, and to make the bodies that will be its depositories more enlightened and more powerful, by making them less numerous. ”

“ Graft must be stamped out of the city administration, and a high order of men elected to the bench. Some big things must be accomplished in the city.
She had arrived at the conclusion that to most people the municipality is an industrial accident, its government rather a matter of police, fire and health administration, some public schools and a police court, a street and water department; that they wanted just enough of these things, and at the lowest possible cost, to enable men to go about their daily business. ”

“ I do not mean centralisation or the removal of that proper control which every local authority should maintain over its own officers. I would maintain intact the great principle of local government, which has been the bulwark of our social and political freedom. But local government may degenerate, and in small towns deteriorate into littleness: local affairs are too frequently avoided by those who are most fitted by intelligence and social standing to take part therein. ”

“ Or they were fighting a sturdy battle with the king's justices to preserve some ancient privilege, the right of the borough perhaps to "swear by itself,"—that is, to a jury of its own or its freedom from the general custom of "frank-pledge." As trade advanced commercial bodies grew up in the boroughs and formed themselves into gilds; and these gilds gradually drew into their own hands the government of the town, which in old days had been decided by the general voice of the whole body of its burghers—that is, of those who held land within its walls. ”

“ A town, doubtless at no distant day to be a city, is growing up around the borders of this reserved tract, and entirely dependent upon it for its prosperity. Whatever can be done properly by the government to secure and retain the full benefit of the waters under its control for the use of the people and the preservation of other health auxiliaries which are now in its possession should not be overlooked. In my opinion, all the mountains within the four townships should be withdrawn from sale. ”

“ There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether great or small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town, therefore, without distinction of size, ought to have its municipal council. It is equally obvious that every town ought to have but one. The different quarters of the same town have seldom or never any material diversities of local interest; they all require to have the same things done, the same expenses incurred; and, except as to their churches, which it is probably desirable to leave under simply parochial management, the same arrangements may be made to serve for all. ”

“ On the other hand, it must be recognized that for many purposes the community, or even the township, is too small a unit to secure the greatest efficiency in administration of public agencies, and so there has been a distinct tendency toward the centralization of many functions of local government in county officials. ”

“ And my case to-night is, that the existing local government bodies, your town councils, borough councils, urban district boards, and so forth, are, for the purposes of municipalisation, far from being the best possible bodies, and that even your county councils fall short, that by their very nature all these bodies must fall far short of the highest possible efficiency, and that as time goes on they must fail even more than they do now to discharge the duties we Fabians would like to thrust upon them. ”

“ Out of the League's efforts grew a “municipal programme” the fundamental features of which were that every community should have the right of self-government in local affairs without the interference of outside governmental or party machinery; that the city's public property in land, and especially its franchise rights, should be preserved unimpaired; that all barriers should be removed which prevented the popular will from expressing itself freely and effectively ”

“ A mere village has no claim to a municipal representation. By a village I mean a place whose inhabitants are not markedly distinguished by occupation or social relations from those of the rural districts adjoining, and for whose local wants the arrangements made for the surrounding territory will suffice. Such small places have rarely a sufficient public to furnish a tolerable municipal council: if they contain any talent or knowledge applicable to public business, it is apt to be all concentrated in some one man, who thereby becomes the dominator of the place. ”

“ The constitution of a municipality assumes that citizens will give, freely and without pay, such time as is wanted for the conduct of the municipal affairs. In local government the Settlement carries on a quiet work which is perhaps more effective than its classes and its lectures. ”

“ If public opinion is evident—and it is easy to organize public opinion in a town—the city representatives will consider the scheme, and if they approve and it is within their power as a council, they are able to levy rates to finance the art gallery, recreation grounds, public gardens, or whatever else. Now let us go to a country district where there is no organization. It may be obvious to one or two people that the place is perishing and the intelligence of its humanity is decaying, lacking some centre of life. ”