File:The New England magazine (1907) (14796559593).jpg

Identifier: newenglandmagaziv37bost (find matches)
Title: The New England magazine
Year: 1887 (1880s)
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Publisher: Boston : (New England Magazine Co.)
Contributing Library: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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direct-ing great business and educational institu-tions, and required to report upon the bestmeans of simplifying and modernizing theentire machinery of State government.Our governments have gradually become,like railroad-rate sheets, so complicatedthat only high-priced experts (called rateclerks when dealing with railroads, andlobbyists when dealing with councils andlegislatures) can understand them. As anatural result, while city, state, and nationare forbidding private enterprises to grantspecial rates or other privileges to favoredpatrons, they are themselves constantlygranting rebates of one sort or another tofavored individuals, corporations, and com-munities. Massachusetts has led the countryin so many beneficent forward movements,beginning with the free public-school sys-tem, that she could with peculiar pro-priety take the lead in this movement. True,it has already been given effect by four orfive cities of Texas, and by the capital ofIowa, in the substitution of city commis-
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398 NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE sions lor city councils; but no State has yetconsidered how easily and profitably a com-monwealth might substitute a State Com-mission for a Legislature. The Slow, Sure Tendency TowardConcentration There is a perceptible unconscious move-ment toward the concentration of publicfunction in the State governments, and thegradual extinction of cities and towns asindependent political units. One by onethe States are taking over the control ofpublic schools, public roads, and the like.Authority once granted to the towns inthese affairs is being steadily withdrawn.Slowly but surely public governments areadopting the new idea of concentration forefficiency and economy. In the severalStates that have adopted the initiative andreferendum the people have practicallytaken back to themselves the legislativepower and have leit to their Legislatures,in all affairs of chief importance, the dutyonly of enacting the public will into writtenlaw. The inevitable next step will be t

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