Taking Municipal Contracts 
 
 out of Politics 
 
 RICHARD HENRY DANA 
 
 Chairman Council National Civil Service Reform League. 
 
 Reprinted from Proceedings of Annual Muting of 
 The National Municipal League. 
 
 ieoe 
 

3 
 
 Taking Municipal Contracts out of Politics 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 INI 
 
 
 Oi 
 
 Municipal administration has become “a complicated vseries 
 of technical services,” requiring experts of special education, 
 training, and, in addition, long experience in municipal work. 
 
 With us, this expert service is mingled with politics. To 
 keep their places, the would-be experts give contracts to 
 political favorites, enforce the law or not with reference to 
 politics, cannot secure a day’s work for a day’s pay from vot¬ 
 ing laborers, and hide extravagance and fraud, all of which is 
 bad government. 
 
 Most of the best and highest-minded experts refuse munic¬ 
 ipal service as offensive, of uncertain tenure and demoralizing. 
 
 In England and Europe, the expert administration, with 
 permanent tenure during good behavior and efficiency, offers 
 a career that attracts the best men, and is separated from the/ 
 political executive. 
 
 It is objected that such separation destroys the “responsi¬ 
 bility” of the chief executive. It is answered that no chief 
 executive can be held to responsibility for details. That 
 should be put on the permanent experts. 
 
 Again, it is objected that the experts should be cabinet 
 officers of the chief executive. There may well be cabinet 
 officers to aid the political executive in determining policies, 
 fixing the budget, and inspecting the expert service and hold¬ 
 ing it to account by power to remove for reasons made public; 
 but the political cabinet officers should be wholly separate 
 persons from the experts themselves. 
 
 Again, it is said that our chief executive should appoint his 
 own experts to carry out his policies. In the great railroads, 
 eminent reorganizers keep the experts, even where altering 
 the former policies. Municipal experts, if not the appointees 
 
 / 
 
 3 
 
 V 
 
of the chief executive, will be held all the more strictly to 
 account. 
 
 Again, it is objected that the heads of business concerns can 
 remove at pleasure; but the “pocket nerve” and the absence 
 of political pressure in private business, have to be offset in 
 politics by requiring publicity of reasons for removal. 
 
 It has been found necessary to separate the judiciary from 
 politics, to secure the best expert administration of justice. 
 
 The great river and harbor, and the Panama Canal work 
 for the United States have been done by army engineers eflS- 
 ciently and honestly, and they are free from politics. 
 
 It is believed we must change our whole idea of a political 
 chief, responsible for detailed administration. That idea was 
 suitable enough in the days of small affairs which could easily 
 be understood by the public and controlled by their votes. 
 But it has broken down in our large cities with complicated 
 administration. 
 
 We should adopt instead the European idea of permanent, 
 trained, expert service of engineers, lawyers, physicians, arch¬ 
 itects, almoners, educators, etc., responsible for administering 
 in detail within appropriations and policies laid out by the 
 political side. 
 
 Experience has demonstrated that it is possible to adjust 
 the political representative and the expert administrative 
 spheres of action so as to avoid “mob” bungling of expert 
 services without falling into red tape bureaucracy. 
 
 The results of such a change would be municipal careers 
 attractive to high-grade experts, the enforcement instead of 
 the evasion of the merit system, sanitary laws carried out, 
 economy and clear accounting secured, obtaining a day’s 
 work for a day’s pay, definite fixing of responsibility between 
 the political executive and the somewhat independent expert 
 administrators, continuity of public works, the separation of 
 the spending from the appropriating power, taking the en¬ 
 forcement of laws, the municipal contracts and the purchase 
 of supplies out of politics, and so driving the money-seeking 
 politicians out of business, and making it easier to select and 
 keep good, a good and capable chief executive. 
 
 4 
 
Taking Municipal Contracts Out of 
 
 Politics. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY DANA, BOSTON, 
 
 Chairman Executive Committee National Civil Service Reform League. 
 
 Municipal administration has now become “ a complicated 
 series of technical services,” requiring men of high character, 
 
 thorough training, and expert in administration. 
 Complications of ^ requires the services of civil, hydraulic 
 
 Government sanitary engineers, of lawyers, physicians, 
 
 bacteriologists, chemists, landscape and building 
 architects, scientific almoners, educators, expert accountants and 
 financiers. Moreover, municipal service is, of itself, a specialized 
 branch of these professions. There are special text-books pre¬ 
 pared and special courses of study given for municipal work in 
 the great technical institutions of the world. But, in addition to 
 special training for municipal work, the greatest efficiency can 
 only be secured in that service by long-continued practise in muni¬ 
 cipal undertakings. As the author of “ A Modern Symposium ” 
 has put it, “ Governments in every civilized country are now 
 moving towards the ideal of an expert administration controlled 
 by an alert and intelligent public opinion.” 
 
 How far is this ideal being carried out in our American cities? 
 The question is as easily answered in general as it is asked, and 
 the answer is. We fail. 
 
 The next question to ask ourselves is why we fail. The 
 Bureau of Municipal Research in New York City and the Finance 
 Commission in Boston have recently thrown much light on the 
 administration of those cities, and that light has disclosed in 
 general a low rate of efficiency and a high rate of expense; 
 and, in particular, the heads of administrative departments, for 
 the most part, to be untrained, inexperienced and incompetent, 
 frequently changed, in many cases dishonest and in others at least 
 giving in to, if not personally profiting by, dishonest practises. 
 The Boston Finance Commission reported that the few capable 
 
 5 
 
6 
 
 and honest heads of departments, they regretted to say, had failed ' 
 to disclose, had apparently been unable to prevent, and, in sev¬ 
 eral cases, had actually furthered dishonest practises which had 
 come to their knowledge but from which they got no profit, ex¬ 
 cept their continuance in office. With it all we see most con¬ 
 spicuously the mingling of politics with what ought to be the 
 expert administration of details. 
 
 Now, how is it in the cities of Europe and Great Britain? 
 There we find high grade, especially trained experts, carrying on 
 
 the detailed administration, with continuity of 
 Fweign service and policy, and no mingling of politics 
 
 ciency expert branch. There we find a clear 
 
 separation between the political executive and the expert admin¬ 
 istration; and it is also worthy of remark that this is almost the 
 only important feature in common, as the kinds of municipal 
 government differ in those countries. For example, in Great 
 Britain, for the most part, the political executive work is carried 
 on by committees of the municipal councils, which are also legis¬ 
 lative and appropriative bodies, the mayors being mere presiding 
 officers, and a pretty broad electorate. In France, the mayor, 
 called in Paris the prefect of the Seine, is the chief political 
 executive. Except in Paris, the mayors are elected. The city 
 councils, also elected, are the legislative and appropriating bodies 
 in all the European cities. For Paris and three of its suburbs, 
 the prefect is appointed by the national minister of the interior, 
 partly on the theory that the national government appropriates 
 large sums of money for the capital city, just as Congress does 
 for Washington. In Germany, the city councils select a mayor 
 who is not a political executive but rather an expert in municipal 
 administration, sometimes chosen for a long term of ten or twelve 
 years or so, and sometimes practically for life, frequently having 
 served successfully for years as mayor of a smaller city, and then 
 called by promotion to administer the larger one. The elective 
 franchise in Germany is far more restricted and property holding 
 given a larger influence than in the cities of either Great Britain 
 or France. The one common feature of all, differing as they do 
 in other respects, is the employment of high grade, expert admin¬ 
 istrators, their permanent tenure of office, and the separation of 
 
7 
 
 them from the political side of the government. In Germany and 
 France, this separation is more rigid and complete than in Great 
 Britain, where it seems to exist more from custom, and there are 
 not wanting signs that the separation in Great Britain is not as 
 complete as it should be, though in the main well sustained at 
 present. 
 
 Is this common feature of separation in well-governed cities, 
 and the absence of it in the badly-administered ones, a mere coin¬ 
 cidence or result, or is it an underlying cause of the good and 
 bad results? To answer this, let us examine a little more closely 
 and see if there is anything in the mingling of politics with expert 
 administration, that has anything to do with’causing extravagance, 
 graft and inefficiency; anything in the conditions of this inter¬ 
 mingling that has a bearing on the motives that affect the actions 
 of men. 
 
 Now what do we find? First, we must notice that this inter¬ 
 mingling of politics with would-be expert administration in our 
 
 American cities is not only allowed but com- 
 Politics and pelled. In many charters, the terms of office 
 Expert Service supposed expert administrators are co¬ 
 
 terminous with those of the chief political executives. In a few 
 the terms are indefinite; but the chief executive can, as a rule, 
 turn out the administrative officers without assignment of cause, 
 and put in their places whom he wishes, is supposed to make 
 pretty sweeping changes when he comes into office, and generally 
 has a right to put his thumb into the expert details, and often, 
 as we see, pulls out for himself and his friends many a plum; 
 for example, ordering a contract to be assigned to some favorite 
 instead of given on open competition, or having purchases made 
 from a particular firm, or payment withheld from another, and 
 the like. But even in the case of competitive bids, by this power 
 over and interference with the supposed expert administrators, 
 the political chief can arrange to have the specifications for com¬ 
 petitive contracts so loosely drawn as to make it easy to assist 
 a favorite and injure an opponent or a mere negative outsider. 
 By means of allowing large bills for extras or the substitution 
 'of inferior materials, he can enable the favorite to make a large 
 profit, and by holding up every payment and making frivolous 
 
8 
 
 objections to all the work done, can ruin the independent outside 
 contractor. Indeed, it might as well be published with the ad¬ 
 vertisement for municipal competitive contracts, “ No contractor 
 unwilling to divvy need apply.” In these ways and by “ split 
 contracts,” “ straw bids,” and other well-known devices, laws 
 requiring competitive bids are evaded or nullified, and the muni¬ 
 cipal contracts and purchases of supplies are kept in politics, 
 with easy opportunity for large, fraudulent profits. 
 
 The supposed expert administrators, for the most part, are 
 men without the necessary education, training or experience, 
 whose chief bringing-up has too frequently been in the saloons 
 and ward politics. As to the “ motives that affect the actions of 
 men,” these would-be experts, even when capable and honest and 
 when not compelled by their chief executive, are practically 
 forced into politics, as already shown, from their own natural 
 desire for the success at nominations and elections of the politi¬ 
 cal forces that put and keep them in office. They have not only 
 to distribute contracts and the purchase of supplies, for politi¬ 
 cal purposes, but they seek to thwart the civil-service laws and 
 to secure as many exempted positions as possible in order to in¬ 
 crease their political patronage. They dare not enforce a day’s 
 work for a day’s pay among the city laborers who are voters. 
 They resort to complicated methods of accounting, as far as the 
 law or evasions of it will allow, so as to conceal extravagance. 
 
 The well-meaning mayor and his political experts do not have 
 to build up a political machine. They find ward leaders already 
 on hand, who control the nominating machinery of their respective 
 districts by appeals to party and race prejudice, religious differ¬ 
 ences, and by securing favors for a large following, building up 
 an extensive acquaintance and gaining popularity in numerous 
 ways, sometimes unobjectionable in themselves, but all for a 
 purpose. These ward leaders ask favors for themselves and their 
 henchmen and it is hard to resist them. It is soon found that 
 these ward politicians and leaders of combinations of wards have 
 far more to say about the nomination and election of a mayor 
 and aldermen than the ordinary business or professional man in 
 ordinary years. Indeed, the support of these leaders is fre¬ 
 quently indispensable for retention in office, either for the mayor 
 
9 
 
 of Expert 
 Service 
 
 or for the heads of departments. It is no more than human 
 nature that a good mayor and capable experts will gradually 
 yield on the one hand, and on the other, that the political leaders 
 will seek a mayor, the more respectable and well-meaning the 
 better, such as will not, in practice, resist their power. 
 
 For example, the present mayor of Boston, elected on a re¬ 
 form wave after the exposures by the first Finance Commission, 
 and who in the beginning made retrenchments, is now shown 
 by the present permanent Finance Commission to be guilty, in a 
 far less degree, however, than his predecessors, of extravagance, 
 of securing partisan appointments and of raising salaries unnec¬ 
 essarily as the question of re-election comes on. 
 
 Let us take the point of view of experts who may consider 
 taking employment. Capable engineers and scientific men are 
 
 discouraged from accepting municipal expert 
 Discouragement administrative work on account of this very in¬ 
 termingling of politics and the uncertainty of 
 tenure. The present mayor of Boston, for ex¬ 
 ample, elected, as I have just said, on a wave of reform, found 
 it impossible to persuade any of the few high-grade persons he 
 first selected to accept the office of superintendent of streets. 
 Mr. McAneny, recently elected president of the Borough of Man¬ 
 hattan, New York, has the same difficulty in getting fit men for 
 heads of his departments. 
 
 Not only are the chief experts discouraged from entering mu¬ 
 nicipal service, but for assistant experts we do not get the high 
 class of men we might otherwise obtain. Besides uncertainty of 
 tenure there is little hope of promotion to the highest places, 
 the service is not a career, and the forced intermingling of prac¬ 
 tical politics is not only offensive to men of high principle and 
 attainments, but it is demoralizing to character. Several promi¬ 
 nent technical and scientific educators in our country have pub¬ 
 licly declared they advise their young graduates not to enter mu¬ 
 nicipal employment, while if the service represented a career, 
 free from practical politics, they as publicly declare their advice 
 would be exactly the opposite. As a result, by not getting the 
 best material for assistant experts, we do not have the persons 
 with special municipal training qualified for promotion to the 
 
lO 
 
 positions of chief experts we might otherwise have, so that our 
 loss is twofold. 
 
 Municipal records are often not complete or trustworthy. The 
 Commission to investigate the feasibility and desirability of dam¬ 
 ming the mouth of the Charles River in the vicinity of Boston, 
 for example, found that the city plans and records in regard to 
 the drainage system were so faulty as to be valueless and new 
 plans based on fresh surveys had to be made. I do not refer to 
 the Metropolitan Sewer Board’s plans. 
 
 The idea of separating, the political from the expert adminis¬ 
 tration was presented to the first Boston Finance Commission, 
 
 and was received with marked approval; but 
 Report of later, they were moved to modify this policy by 
 
 Boston Fmance arguments from influential and high-minded 
 
 citizens on the theory that such separation would 
 diminish the “ responsibility ” of the chief political executive. 
 In the charter which they recommended, and which has passed 
 the Legislature, the would-be experts are pretty much in their 
 old position of being mingled with politics, their terms of ap¬ 
 pointment, like the mayor’s, are for four years, they cannot be 
 removed during their terms of office, except for reasons filed with 
 a chance to reply, but at the end of their terms, hold at the 
 mayor’s pleasure, their salaries may be lowered or abolished al¬ 
 together by the mayor and city council and in case of vacancy 
 the mayor may appoint whom he wishes, with the one obstacle 
 that new appointees must qualify before the civic service com¬ 
 mission. A qualifying test, however, has been shown again and 
 again, in many years of past and recent history, and in numerous 
 countries, neither to take the appointments out of politics nor to 
 secure permanency of tenure; nor high ability; at best it keeps 
 out the absolutely incompetent; so that, after all, the commingling 
 of politics with expert administration still exists in Boston’s new 
 city charter. 
 
 As this idea of responsibility seems, in the minds of many not 
 only in Boston but elsewhere, to be opposed to the idea of separ¬ 
 ating the expert administration, let us examine a little more care¬ 
 fully into this “ responsibility 
 
 In its report, the Commission gives as an illustration of success- 
 
II 
 
 ful executive responsibility, such as they had in mind, the ad¬ 
 ministration of the first Josiah Quincy as mayor of Boston in 
 1823-9. The population of Boston was then 60,000, and the 
 functions of the city were extremely simple. There was no water 
 supply, no street railway, no sewer system. The fire department 
 consisted of a few Perkins’ tubs,” worked by hand, in con¬ 
 trol of unpaid volunteer companies. In the last year of Josiah 
 Quincy’s administration, an extra “ tub ” was put in South 
 Boston. There were no steam fire-engines until 1855. The 
 electric fire alarm was introduced years later. The pavements 
 were simple gravel roads, or cobblestones taken from the islands 
 in the harbor. There was no police department; only a few con¬ 
 stables. The superintendent of streets needed only to be an in¬ 
 telligent boss teamster, who could select good packing gravel, and 
 see that the workmen rammed the cobble stones with some de¬ 
 gree of evenness. Macadam and Telford pavement were un¬ 
 known. There was no need of engineering skill beyond simple 
 surveying. Bacteriology was an unknown science. There was 
 no public library, no city hospital, no city ferries, no compli¬ 
 cated questions with steam railroads and terminal facilities. The 
 area of Boston was then less than one-third of its present area, 
 and but a still smaller fraction of that of New York, Philadel¬ 
 phia or Chicago of to-day. Its annual expenditure was then 
 $333 jOOO) while now it is $25,000,000, and New York’s budget 
 is $165,000,000 a year. Its debt was about $900,000, while 
 now it is about $100,000,000.^ This first Mayor Quincy might 
 have known personally every constable, foreman and many of the 
 laborers in the city. He could easily have visited every laying of 
 cobblestones or spreading of road gravel, and he might have 
 inspected the trial of the “ Perkins’ tub ” for South Boston, and 
 yet have had time to attend to all his other obligations, public 
 and private. Indeed, those were the days of primitive things, 
 when the mayor^and the voters could easily comprehend and intel¬ 
 ligently pass upon all the simple details of administration, and 
 when Mr. Quincy’s view that at all times the blame should rest 
 upon him (the mayor) without power of throwing it off on 
 
 1 Including its share of Metropolitan debt which the city will have to pay. 
 
12 
 
 Others in case of any defect of plan or inefficiency of execution ** 
 was feasible. I don’t believe there is a man living who can to-day 
 successfully carry that sort of responsibility for “ defect of plan 
 or inefficiency of execution ” for one of our large, modern cities, 
 nor is he held up to it by the voters at the polls. Indeed, that 
 Mayor Quincy kind of responsibility, as President Eliot has 
 well said, is to-day “ a myth ”. 
 
 It may be questioned whether the kind of “ responsibility ”, 
 which means that the political executive must have a hand in 
 
 appointing all his would-be experts, which was 
 Responsibility proper enough in the simple days such as those 
 
 ^ of the first Mayor Quincy, has not become a use¬ 
 
 less appendix to our present complex administration, causing dis¬ 
 ease and danger, and only fit to be cut out from our modern plan 
 of municipal government. We give unlimited responsibility and 
 in practice the politicians exercise it. 
 
 One step further; it is worthy of treatment by a separate 
 thesis whether we secure as great practical responsibility (for 
 responsibility somewhere of course we must have) to the public, 
 when the expert administrators are appointed by the political 
 executive, as when they are somewhat independent. When the 
 appointees have been to blame, those responsible for their ap¬ 
 pointment are inclined to whitewash, as witness the star route,” 
 whiskey and postoffice investigations by Congress, whose nomi¬ 
 nees were the ones involved. 
 
 Another important reason for this partial independence of 
 tenure is the desirability of separating the appropriating from 
 the spending functions of the city as far as possible. As long 
 as a part of the appropriating side is directly responsible for all 
 the spending, then waste and extravagance are made up and 
 ‘‘ glossed over ” by larger appropriations. But if a somewhat 
 independent board is to spend, will it not be held strictly to appro¬ 
 priations made to fit the needs, not the extravagances, of detail 
 administration? 
 
 What, then, under a system of separation between the political 
 executive and the expert administrators, would be the responsi¬ 
 bility of the chief political executive? It would consist in laying 
 out the budget, based on reports from and interviews with the 
 
13 
 
 Change 
 Questioned 
 
 experts, directing the general policies of the city, suggesting im¬ 
 provements, seeing through investigation and supervision that 
 the work is being done economically and well, and that the laws 
 are being enforced, rewarding by praise or promotion where de¬ 
 served, and punishing by blame or removal where fault or ineffi¬ 
 ciency is clear. 
 
 But, once more, as to the theory that the executive must ap¬ 
 point his experts, in order that he may carry out his policies and 
 
 be responsible to the public, that was one of the 
 Necessity for arguments against the introduction of the civil- 
 
 service law for the appointment of subordinates 
 of collectors of customs and internal revenue 
 and of postmasters, publicly made by many of those officials, and 
 yet experience has shown that they have more instead of less 
 control of their subordinates than before, and that better results 
 are achieved. One reason for this, at least, is that, while the ap¬ 
 pointments were political, the collector and the postmaster were 
 not free to select for themselves, but had to take those whom 
 the politicians sent them, nor could they dismiss inefficient or 
 insubordinate or even intemperate employees, who had strong 
 enough political backing. 
 
 How many a mayor has to take, for a would-be high-grade 
 expert, one that will please the political leaders? Sometimes we 
 see these appointees running the mayor, because of their superior 
 political pull, instead of the mayor running them, and all the more 
 as election day approaches. 
 
 But how is it in large business undertakings? Is it necessary 
 that the new head of the great enterprise, even if adopting new 
 policies, should change the chief experts under him? There ap¬ 
 peared lately, in one of the magazines, an interesting article on 
 the splendid reorganization of the Union and Southern Pacific 
 R. R. systems by its new president, the late E. H. Harriman. 
 This article showed how, by establishing new policies, spending 
 largely in some directions and making numerous savings both 
 small and large in others, he had given greatly increased facility 
 to the public and had greatly enlarged the profits to the share¬ 
 holders without increasing rates. 
 
 What, for our purposes, was most striking, was that he ac- 
 
M 
 
 complished all this by using the experts already in the employ of 
 the railroad, who, under former presidents, had been carrying 
 on the very reverse, in some respects, of the new policies, and 
 he did not bring in new men to these higher positions. He pro¬ 
 moted some of the best ones, and inspired them all with new 
 ideas, encouraging their best efforts and criticising wisely any¬ 
 thing short of the best attainments. They responded splendidly 
 to such treatment, and behold the practical results! 
 
 In order to be sure of the facts, I wrote the author of the 
 article, an acknowledged master of railroad affairs, and he re¬ 
 plies that not only did Mr. Harriman use none but the experts 
 already in the employ of the roads, including even his chief 
 counsel; but that also “ Mr. Hill, in taking over the Burlington, 
 kept Mr. Harris to head it, putting his own traffic man, Mr. 
 Miller, in charge of traffic, but keeping the traffic organization 
 of the road and its personnel intact.” 
 
 “ I think it safe to say,” goes on the author, “ that no eminent 
 railroad organizer has ever done other than to make use of all 
 the available material found in office.” 
 
 In these two greatest railroad reorganizations under new 
 presidents and boards of directors there was no change in the ex¬ 
 perts in one road, and only one change in the other. 
 
 But, further, in order to give the necessary somewhat perma¬ 
 nent tenure and partial independence from politics to the experts, 
 
 the tenure should be for good behavior and effi- 
 Permanency ciency and the power to remove or diminish sal¬ 
 ary should be made for cause only, not cause established by 
 court proceedings, but under some assurance of such publicity as 
 will restrain its improper exercise. 
 
 It has been objected that, in business, the power to remove is 
 unlimited. In business, however, the absence of political pressure 
 on the one hand and the presence of the individual pocket 
 nerve ” on the other are real and effective restraints, while with 
 a chief municipal executive, the presence of political pressure 
 and the absence of the pocket nerve,” need to be offset by rea¬ 
 sonable requirements of publicity. 
 
 The power to appoint, remove or diminish salary without cause, 
 and the power to interfere in detail may be of advantage to a 
 
15 
 
 thoroughly trustworthy and capable chief executive; but if the 
 experience of at least a whole generation has shown that the ex¬ 
 istence of this power makes it to the interest of ward politicians 
 not to have a good chief executive in municipalities, may it not 
 be well to shift from the chief political executive some of the 
 responsibility for the details onto experts. If we do this, do we 
 not take the contracts and purchases out of politics, and, of even 
 greater importance, do we not take away the motive of the 
 machine politician, as we know him, for going into politics, and 
 deprive him of one of his chief powers in securing control and 
 thus remove the chief cause of bad city government? As one 
 retired politician, trained in all the ins and outs of one of our 
 largest American cities, said, If you carry out that plan, then 
 F. G. and L. M. (referring to two bosses of what he considered 
 the dangerous kind) will immediately retire and take up some 
 other business.'^ 
 
 But it has also been suggested that a system of permanent, 
 somewhat independent municipal experts would result in the di¬ 
 vision of responsibility. In so far as a division of responsibility 
 means a number of people responsible for the same thing, who 
 may each shift the blame on the others, it is bad. So far as the 
 present system goes, however, the theoretical responsibility for 
 acts of a mayor’s subordinates, if done without his knowledge, 
 amounts to very little in practise. The head of a department is 
 made the scapegoat, and the chief goes free. 
 
 In the United States Government, many high, non-elective 
 officals are responsible under their statutory bonds for the de¬ 
 linquencies of their subordinates. But how 
 Responsibility for ^joes this responsibility work out in practise? 
 Delinquencies There is not a single case in our past history 
 where, in the end, a superior has had to pay for acts of his sub¬ 
 ordinates in which he has not taken part. Were it otherwise, 
 would it not strike us as an unreasonable hardship? 
 
 How, let us ask, does this responsibility work out in the case 
 of a mayor and the heads of municipal departments? Let us 
 take a single case, for example, the famous Fenway scandals of 
 1904-5 in Boston. The late Mayor Collins, of Boston, it not 
 having been shown that he was privy to the extravagance and 
 
i6 
 
 frauds, got very little blame for the acts of his superintendent 
 of streets, whom he had appointed. Let us look a little closer. 
 This official, appointed by Mayor Collins in his first term, had 
 raised a large sum of money for the re-election campaign of his 
 superior, and if Mr. Collins had cared to know, he could have 
 found out that the main contributors were municipal contractors 
 and others having dealings at City Hall, and it was Mayor Collins 
 that signed the orders making the Fenway extravagance and 
 frauds possible, by which some of those contributors reimbursed 
 themselves, yet he was not supposed to be personally involved. 
 What became of the mayor’s responsibility” in this case? On 
 the death of Mayor Collins, which occurred not long after the 
 Fenway exposures, his administration was eulogized by promi¬ 
 nent men of all parties and walks of life, and there has recently 
 been erected to his name an imposing monument in the most 
 fashionable part of Boston, the inscription being written by one 
 of the foremost men of the country. Are we not right in saying 
 that the imputed responsibility for acts of appointees is a myth? 
 
 The proposed system, however, is not a division of responsi¬ 
 bility; it is rather a separation of responsibility, fixing it more 
 
 clearly and definitely than before, and where it 
 Separation of really belongs. The permanent expert, whose 
 
 Des&able^^^^^^ professional reputation depends upon the suc¬ 
 cess of his work, is to be responsible for what 
 the first Mayor Quincy called “ defects of plan or inefficiency of 
 execution ” of details. 
 
 But it has been claimed, as an objection, that these expert 
 administrators should be also partly cabinet officers and political 
 advisors of the mayor, and for that reason should be appointed 
 and removed by him with perfect freedom. It is conceded, nay 
 more, we claim, that the mayor (if the chief political executive 
 be a mayor) should have the power to select a cabinet of political 
 advisors to help him decide on the budget and policies, and to 
 supervise and criticize the departments—that is, the mayor and 
 his political cabinet would, in the words from the “ Modern Sym¬ 
 posium,” be the means of control by an alert and intelligent 
 public opinion.” There should always be, however, a clear dis¬ 
 tinction between the political executive with his political advisors 
 
17 
 
 on the one hand, and the expert administrators on the other, 
 between the appropriating and the spending, the criticising and 
 the criticised. 
 
 The trouble has been that we have heretofore mixed these two 
 inconsistent functions in the same person. Let us separate them. 
 
 But have we any instance, in the history of Anglo-Saxon gov¬ 
 ernment, where too much control was found dangerous in prac¬ 
 tise, and where, for the general good, it was limited ? One of the 
 chief functions of government is the administration of justice, 
 and this used to be a part of the duties of kings. The judges 
 were their representatives; but the power to remove the judges 
 was found to be a power too great to lodge with safety in the 
 executive, and even the legislature could not be trusted to have 
 the power to diminish the judges’ salaries, and so, in England and 
 the United States, the judges cannot be removed but for cause 
 well established, as a rule, their salaries cannot be lessened while 
 in office, and, in England, the federal government of the United 
 States, and in Massachusetts, their appointment is for life. In 
 those states where the judges are the most mingled with politics, 
 and at the time when this mingling is greatest, then and there 
 the expert administration of justice is the worst. 
 
 As a recent instance of interference with justice we have Ger¬ 
 many’s note to the United States when about to apply force to 
 Venezuela. The note said, in substance, that President Castro 
 opposed the claims of Germany and its citizens, and he sug¬ 
 gested submitting the claims to the Venezuelan courts. But 
 those courts, the note stated, were the echoes of the President’s 
 wishes, as he was in the habit of removing those judges who dif¬ 
 fered from his views. 
 
 While we see this independence of municipal experts working 
 well in Great Britain and Europe, and while such authorities 
 
 on government as President A. Lawrence Lowell, 
 Independence Hon. James Bryce and Dr. Albert Shaw 
 
 think the existence of this system is the one 
 efficient means if not the very cause of the better 
 government in those cities, it still might be asked, “ Would the 
 system work well in our climate and country ? ” Have we any¬ 
 thing of the sort in the United States? Yes, the President of the 
 
 of Experts 
 Desirable 
 
i8 
 
 United States, our chief executive, elected by the people, has the 
 responsibility, exercised through his secretary of war, of carry¬ 
 ing out all the harbor and river engineering work appropriated 
 for by Congress. This is all done by army engineers, of West 
 Point training and education, already in office when the President 
 and his cabinet come in, and his power of removal is limited in 
 practise just about as much as is proposed for the municipal ex¬ 
 pert administrators; yet there is no shirking of responsibility 
 on account of the practically permanent tenure of army engineers, 
 or because the President has not appointed them, and the work 
 has been thoroughly, efficiently and honestly done. The great 
 work on the Panama Canal, since it has been put in charge 
 of the army engineers, has certainly been going on smoothly, 
 rapidly, economically, efficiently and with less “ fuss and feath¬ 
 ers ’’ than ever before. 
 
 To be sure, the President of the United States can asign an 
 army engineer to other duties; but even then, the list of army 
 engineers eligible for a place is extremely limited, and in practise 
 the changes of duties are based on seniority and experience. 
 
 Again, it has been objected that, to avoid the ills of “mob” 
 bungling of technical administration, we fly to red-tape bureau¬ 
 cracy ; but experience had demonstrated that, by the scientific 
 adjustment of the representative and administrative spheres of 
 action, we may have the best permanent, expert service, ambitious 
 for fame, kept at its highest efficiency and initiative, by an ap¬ 
 preciative and exacting public, interested in getting the best 
 results, and acting through its political representatives endowed 
 with sufficient powers. 
 
 As this co-ordination is important, allow me to state it in an¬ 
 other way. Let the public act within the scope of its ability and 
 the experts within the scope of theirs, each influencing the other, 
 and then we can secure democratic home rule, without danger to 
 efficiency, economy and honesty. 
 
 Before closing this paper, I wish to touch shortly on two other 
 causes commonly assigned for the failure of efficient and honest 
 government in our cities. One is the want of sufficient salaries, 
 and the other is the lack of property qualification for municipal 
 voters. 
 
19 
 
 As to salaries for the would-be experts, it is undoubtedly true 
 that they are usually too low; but on the other hand, we see most 
 
 able experts working on small salaries as heads 
 
 Cgln-rioa ^ ° 
 
 of some of the scientific bureaus of the United 
 States government and as professors and investigators in our uni¬ 
 versities. Again, many of the salaries for the heads of municipal 
 departments have been raised without corresponding improve¬ 
 ment. The offices are still in politics. The high salaries have not 
 frightened away politicians. 
 
 In the case of the superintendent of streets under Mayor Col¬ 
 lins in charge of the scandalous Fenway work, his salary was 
 $7,500 a year. His successor, appointed by Mayor Fitzgerald, 
 was a man even less fit for the place. 
 
 As to the other cause assigned, namely, our lack of property 
 qualifications in municipal government, if restricting our elective 
 franchise is our only remedy, reformers might well despair and 
 abandon further effort, as there is precious little chance that the 
 franchise can ever be cut down. The fate of Coriolanus in 
 Rome is likely to follow anyone who would undertake his experi¬ 
 ment here. Besides, while admitting that the property qualifi¬ 
 cation would probably result in better economy in city adminis¬ 
 tration, if it were established, let me ask two things—first, does 
 history, past and present, show that government by the wealthy 
 is always free from corruption; and second, if we had property 
 representation, would it not adopt this very separation of the 
 expert administrators, as it has done in Germany, as the first and 
 best means of securing good city government? 
 
 So far I have advisedly used the term “ chief executive ” of a 
 municipality, rather than mayor, because, whether that chief ex¬ 
 ecutive be a commission or a mayor alone or a mayor with a politi¬ 
 cally-selected cabinet, or committees of a city council, whether of 
 one or two chambers, or a combination of several of these, there 
 will still be the need of educated, trained and highly specialized 
 experts, with pretty permanent and somewhat independent tenure, 
 to carry out our numerous municipal undertakings with as little 
 intermingling of politics as is reasonably possible, for the very 
 protection of such future executives as mean well, and the better 
 chance of getting good ones in. 
 
20 
 
 Summary of 
 Suggestions 
 
 Should our plan be adopted, let me recapitulate some of the 
 objects which would be attained. 
 
 (a) Securing for such positions experienced men of high char¬ 
 acter and training in place of men without the necessary knowl¬ 
 edge, whose chief bringing up has too frequently 
 been in the saloon and in ward politics. 
 
 (b) A tenure based on merit and fitness, in¬ 
 stead of subserviency to political powers through whose favor 
 the position is held and who demand favors in return. 
 
 (c) Heads of departments who believe in the merit system and 
 wish to enforce it, in place of spoilsmen seeking to avoid and 
 break it down, and to circumvent the civil service commission. 
 
 (d) Municipal contracts honestly and efficiently made and 
 strictly enforced, in place of contracts so carelessly drawn and 
 carried out as to open opportunities for fraudulent profits to in¬ 
 fluential contractors. 
 
 (e) Clean streets and better security for the public health, 
 such as Col. Waring gave when in charge of the streets of New 
 York. 
 
 (f) Economy^ of being free to get a day’s work for a day’s 
 
 pay. 
 
 (g) Encouraging engineers and scientific men to take muni¬ 
 cipal work and keeping them in office, instead of discouraging 
 them with the prospect of political wrangles and turning them 
 out to make room for those of more political influence. 
 
 (h) Offering to capable and specially-trained experts a career 
 in municipal work. 
 
 (i) A chance of promotion that will attract capable young men 
 for the positions of assistants. 
 
 (j) More independent supervision and investigation by the 
 political executive, as the expert administrators are themselves 
 somewhat independent and responsible for their own departments. 
 
 (k) A separation of the appropriating from the spending 
 functions. 
 
 ( l ) An accounting that will show the cost of public work done, 
 instead of methods intended to conceal extravagance. 
 
 ^ The counsel for both new and old finance commissions of Boston, 
 recently stated that $io are lost by inefficiency to one dollar lost by fraud. 
 
21 
 
 (m) Continuity of public works conceived on broad plans for 
 the future, and not makeshift and vacillating policies with refer¬ 
 ence to temporary political expedients. 
 
 (n) More definite fixing of responsibility between the political 
 executive and the expert administrators. 
 
 (o) And finally, taking all forms of spoils, both patronage, law 
 enforcement and contracts, out of politics, removing the motives 
 that induce the machine politician to keep his hand on the throttle, 
 and so making it easier to secure good chief executives. 
 
 So important is it to create a public sentiment in favor of the 
 separation of the political, or public policy determining executive, 
 from the expert administration, for the mutual benefit of both, 
 that, for the present general purposes, I shall say nothing as to 
 the means by which this separation may be brought about and 
 maintained, for fear of distracting attention from the desired re¬ 
 sult. If, then, this distinction is correct in theory, and the separa¬ 
 tion desirable in practise, let us set to work at once to create the 
 necessary public opinion; and if there is reasonable hope of se¬ 
 curing the good results set forth in this paper, is it not a cause 
 to arouse all our enthusiasm and inspire our noblest efforts? 
 
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