Editor’s Table: Non-Partisan Government of Cities

1 26 IMPR O VEMENT ERA .

provement magazine we make this offer. Who will join us in the work?

NON-PARTISAN GOVERNMENT OF CITIES.

The political question which promises to be one of first importance in the United States is the non-partisan government of cities. It cannot be considered a new question, for it has been before the people of our country for a number of years; but the effort of the citizen's union movement at the late election in Greater New York to secure non-partisan government for the new world's metropolis has given greater prominence to the question than it ever before possessed. It counts for nothing that the candidate of the citizen's union, Mr Seth Low, President of Columbia College, was defeated in the recent election. The doctrine that a municipality's affairs should be administered for the best welfare of its inhabitants and not in the interest of professional politicians survives Mr. Low's defeat, and will be heard from again and again, even in New York, we believe, as well as elsewhere, and at the last it will be triumphant; because it is one of those common sense propositions which will appeal to the understanding and plain business instincts of the American people. The defeat of Mr. Low means simply that machine politics in Greater New York are at present too strong to be broken down by the non-partisan forces, that is all.

This question in various parts of our own state was before our people in the late elections, and the principle of nonpartisan government in cities was in some places wholly and in others partially triumphant. It was so far successful in Salt Lake City that the non-partisan candidate for mayor, Hon. John Clark, was elected, and also the city auditor and four members of the city council. This certainly was a triumph for the principle of non-partisan government for cities that is very gratifying. Especially when it is remembered that the movement did not take definite shape until some two months before the election.

The chief objection urged against non-partisan government is that where the officers are elected without a party

EDITOR'S TABLE. 127

there is no organized body of citizens to which they are responsible, no effectual way of calling them to account; whereas in the partisan system, the party through whose influence officers are elected stand in a manner responsible for their conduct and may more or less control their administration. And indeed it is but fair to say. that there is some force in this objection as relates to non-partisan efforts in the past. For as a rule they have been but sporadic protests against party government abuses; and not sustained efforts to maintain as a settled policy non-partisan government in municipal affairs. That objection, however, is fully met if non-partisan government in cities be regarded and adhered to as a settled policy of the people; for it only needs to be set upon that basis in order to make the officers elected in pursuance of such a policy responsible to the whole community. This is the proposition that the nonpartisan movement should make to the people. It just as well might not have come at all if it has not come to stay as a settled policy.

The justification of non-partisan government of cities lies in the fact that the affairs of municipal government nowhere touch the issues upon which the American people are divided into political parties. City governments are chiefly concerned in giving adequate police protection to the people; in sustaining an efficient fire department; supplying water; preserving sanitary conditions; cleaning streets and keeping sidewalks in repair; furnishing lights for the public convenience; opening and preserving public parks; and controlling and, so far as may be, suppressing the vices and vicious elements common to large aggregations of population. These things are the chief concern of city governments, and none of them affect the great questions of state or national politics, either directly or indirectly. The question of free coinage of silver is not involved; nor protection or free trade; nor the question of strict or loose construction of constitutional grants of power. Indeed, municipal governments as we now know them, so numerous and so powerful, were unknown and present difficulties never contemplated by the founders of our government. But these problems are thrust upon the men