Chapter VII - Too Many Overlapping Local Governments and Taxing Bodies

Now it is true that the State of Massachusetts is a big thing with a population of 3,8 50,000. Naturally it takes quite a little machinery of government and a good many officers to govern so considerable a number. But the first thing that strikes a man accustomed to large but efficient organization is the excessive complication and multiplicity of elections, and the fact that many elective officials are mere ad ministrators, chosen to carry· out the law, not to make it. For instance, of all the 34 different sorts of elective official chosen as above by state, county, city, and town, only the state senators and· represent atives, the city aldermen and the town selectmen have power to legislate. They alone represent the will of the people, as it changes from time to time and is expressed. at elections; all other elected officials are mere servants of the law, whose duty it is to carry it out without altering it in one jot or tittle. As they are bound to obey the law, there is no necessity for their election by the people; since in that election no [208 ] Too Many Overlapping Local Governments other mandate is given them by the people. Once more I repeat, they are mere servants of the law; and for the best interest of the community they should not be made independent of the legislature, able to defy it; or be subject to disturbance by elec tions, so long as they fill their offices satisfactorily, becoming more and more expert in their duties by long familiarity. Election should logically be limited to the legislative body; which expresses the changing will of the people in the changing law.

The next thing which strikes one accustomed to large organization is the multiplicity and· inconve nience of county, town, and city lines; that is, the il logical and unnecessary division of the state into so many local governmental units. It is probable that until recent years no great thought has been given to efficiency in government and, as I have remarked elsewhere, there has been no standard of comparison, such as we now find in great modern corporations, by which to measure governmental efficiency. Overgrowth of empire was undreamed of; distance did not count in old time politics. If Spain could conquer the Philip pines, conquer them she did; just as Rome conquered Great Britain. The theory of ,government was mainly military; and the standard of military ef ficiency has always been its coercive, not its con structive power. It is a maxim of warfare not to count the cost, but to carry the objective. In com merce it is just the opposite: one does not attempt an objective if threatened with too great a cost.

I do not know that the theory of the limitation of efficient organization has been reduced to writing certainly I have not seen such a treatise-but the experience of our great railways and corporations seems to indicate that successful organization of men [ 2°9 ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation cannot get away from family life; in other words, the great majority of workers, to constitute efficient personnel, must be able to go home at night to their families. The railways find themselves obliged to limit their train-people to runs one or two hundred miles in length; so that the engineer, the conductor, and others may not be obliged to spend more than every other night away from home; and their roads are cut up into divisions accordingly. The great manufacturing concerns find it better to plant their works at strategic points, convenient to raw material and distribution of finished product; grouping their employees in the immediate neighborhood, and then decentralize-that is, leave each unit to operate under its own local management, there on the spot; merely co-ordinating the activities of the different independent units from a central office. Both rail ways and manufacturing corporations find that economy and efficiency accompany increasing size and volume of business transacted by each unit, only so long as personnel is concentrated sufficiently; that is, so long as the great mass of its employees can go home at night. Personal contact with management must be maintained throughout, from day to day.

If we apply the same reasoning to governmental organization, it follows that local units of government can be enlarged advantageously, only up to the commutation radius; that is the distance within which all city employees can go daily to work and home. In the United States, by reason of our wonderful railway system, each state possesses a number of naturally strategic railway centres, each of which is the metropolis, or sub-metropolis, of an area with a radius of perhaps fifty miles. Within late years the automobile makes each such railway centre less dependent upon the railways for its natI 210 ] Too Many Overlapping Local Governments ural trade; but the 50-mile radius is still approxi mately the limit within which population daily flows to and from a market centre, as the life-blood flows to and from the heart. A great governmental simplifi cation and advantage would result if each such nat ural centre should annex what the newspapers call its "hinterland," abolishing all the smaller govern mental units formerly existing.

Some years ago I amused myself by making a study for a simplified state of Illinois. I have forgotten now the details, but I think I reduced local govern ment in the state to some 15 units. Chicago with its hinterland; Bloomington, Springfield, Peoria, and other cities with theirs. My recollection is that the plan did away with something like 300 local govern mental units within the commutation radius of Chicago alone ! Furthermore, the plan did away with all elections but those of legislative officers, leaving it to them to appoint all administrative offi cers; precisely as boards of directors are elected by the shareholders of great corporations; and then proceed to appoint their chairman, the president, and perhaps one or two other high administrative officers-the latter being entrusted with the "hiring and firing" of all the rest of the personnel, whether large or small. Especially in these days· of the automobile has it become possible everywhere to consolidate our existing small units of local government to the greatest advantage, around natural commercial centres within say a 50-mile radius. In the crowded eastern states, such as Massachusetts, a 2 s-mile radius would be sufficient. For instance, all of the local governments in Worcester County, Mass., might be concentrated in two consolidated units, centring, let us say, on Fitchburg and Worcester.

[ZII ] Too Much Government-Too Much Taxation Take, for instance; the service of fire protection. One fire department, with a sufficient number of en gines apportioned among the largest centres of population, would serve each unit; with a common central reserve both of machines and firemen, which could be detached and sent at short notice to any point requiring either emergency service or relief in case of sickness or absence of regular men, or break down of machinery. The same is true of police ser vice, and would carry with it the advantage of a mo bile reserve, capable of being thrown by automobile at any moment to any point within an hour's time. It would be necessary, of course, that the regular details from each department of public service, such as Police Department, Fire Department, Street Department, etc., allotted to each community, should be placed under the local command of a manager or general executive officer for that com munity; very much as the Division Superintendent of a railroad is in general charge over his entire divi sion. The co-ordination of the activities of the local managers could be accomplished to the best advan tage by their daily meeting in conference for an hour or two, at the central office of the consolidated unit; which could easily be accomplished by automobile.

There would naturally be a chairman or general manager of the whole consolidated unit, to whom the local managers would be responsible. Such a plan of organization as this would reduce the number of local consolidated governmental units in the State of Massachusetts to something like I I or 12; and with the further suggestions for uni fication contained in later chapters, should enor mously simplify the business of elections while considerably reducing costs and greatly increasing efficiency of local government. [ 212] CHAPTER VIII TOO MANY ELECTIVE OFFICES, CHECKS AND BALANCES THE useless multiplicity both of governmental units and of elective offices, to which I have just re ferred, necessarily results in a huge ballot. I would here illustrate this fact by a reduced zinc-etching of a ballot that I picked up a year or two ago in front of a polling booth in New York City. It contains, as the reader will note, the names of 88 candidates for 15 different offices. It is decorated with a large finger-pointer showing how to vote· for Ogden Mills for'State Senator. Evidently it wa's distributed by wholesale in Mills's district (he is a rich man) so that the voter might ea'sily identify his name and mark his ballot accordingly. You will note that the election covered State officers, District Judges, mem bers of the State Assembly and Senate, and Repre sentatives and Senators in Congress; affording a most beautiful opportunity for trading votes between these three different classes of candidates. Such Australian ballots, more or less complicated, are used nowa days at nearly every election in the United States.