History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

The government of the United States is especially weak in administration, and is far behind many of the governments of the Old World in this respect. With a thoroughly established civil service system, the effectiveness of the administration would be increased fully fifty per cent. Under the present party system the waste is enormous, and as the people must ultimately pay for this waste, the burden thrown upon them is great. In the first place, the partisan system necessarily introduces large numbers of inexperienced, inefficient officers who must spend some years in actual practice before they are really fitted for the positions which they occupy. In the second place, the time spent by congressmen and other high officials in attention to applicants for office and in urging of appointments, prevents them from improving their best opportunity for real service to the people.

The practice of civil service reform is being rapidly adopted in the nations of the world which have undertaken the practice of self-government, and in those nations where monarchy or imperialism still prevails, persons in high authority feel more and more impelled to appoint efficient officers to carry out the plans of administrative government. It is likely that the time will soon come when all offices requiring peculiar skill or especial training will be filled on the basis of efficiency, determined by competitive examination or other tests of ability.

Another important reform, which has already been begun in the United States, and which, in its latest movement, originated in Australia, is ballot reform. There has been everywhere in democratic government a tendency for fraud to increase on election days. The manipulation of the votes of individuals through improper methods has been the cause of fraud and a means of thwarting the will of the people. It is well that the various states and cities have observed this and set themselves to the task of making laws to guard properly the ballot-box and give free, untrammelled expression to the will of the people. Though nearly all the states in the Union have adopted some system of balloting (based largely upon the Australian system), many of them are far from perfection in their systems. Yet the progress in this line is encouraging when the gains in recent years are observed.

Since the decline of the old feudal times, in which our modern tax system had its origin, there has been a constant improvement in the system of taxation. Yet this has been very slow and apparently has been carried on in a bungling way. The tendency has been to tax every form of property that could be observed or described. And so our own nation, like many others, has gone on, step by step, adding one tax after another, without carefully considering the fundamental principles of taxation or the burdens laid upon particular classes. To-day we have a complex system, full of irregularities and imperfections. Our taxes are poorly and unjustly assessed, and the burdens fall heavily upon some, while others have an opportunity of escaping. We have just entered an era of careful study of our tax systems, and the various reports from the different states and the writings of economists are arousing great interest on these points. When once the imperfections are clearly understood and defined, there may be some hope of a remedy of present abuses. To be more specific, it may be said that the assessments of the property in counties of the same state vary between seventeen and sixty per cent of the market valuation. Sometimes this discrepancy is between the assessments of adjacent counties, and so great is the variation that seldom two counties have the same standard for assessing valuation.

The personal-property tax shows greater irregularity than this, especially in our large cities. The tax on imports, though apparently meeting the approval of a majority of the American people, makes, upon the whole, a rather expensive system of taxation, and it is questionable whether sufficient revenue can be raised from this source properly to support the government without seriously interfering with our foreign commerce. The internal revenue has many unsatisfactory phases. The income tax has been added to an imperfect system of taxation, instead of being substituted for the antiquated personal-property tax. Taxes on franchises, corporations, and inheritances are among those more recently introduced in attempts to reform the tax system.

The various attempts to obtain sufficient revenue to support the government or to reform an unjust and unequal tax have led to double taxation, and hence have laid the burden upon persons holding a specific class of property. There are to-day no less than five methods in which double taxation occurs in the present system of taxation of corporations. The taxation of mortgages, because it may be shifted to the borrower, is virtually a double tax. The great question of the incidence of taxation, or the determination upon whom the tax ultimately falls, has not received sufficient care in the consideration of improved systems of taxation. Until it has, and until statesmen use more care in tax legislation and the regulation of the system, and officers are more conscientious in carrying it out, we need not hope for any rapid movement in tax reform. The tendency here, as in all other reforms, especially where needed, is for some person to suggest a certain political nostrum—like the single tax—for the immediate and complete reform of the system and the entire renovation and purification of society. But scientific knowledge, clear insight, and wisdom are especially necessary for any improvement, and even then improvement will come through a long period of practice, more or less painful on account of the shifting of methods of procedure.

The most appalling example of the results of modern government is to be found in the municipal management of our large cities. It has become proverbial that the American cities are the worst ruled of any in the world. In European countries the evils of city government were discovered many years ago, and in most of the nations there have been begun and carried out wisely considered reforms, until many of the cities of the Old World present examples of tolerably correct municipal government.

In America there is now a general awakening in every city, but to such an extent have people, by their indifference or their wickedness, sold their birthrights to politicians and demagogues and the power of wealth, that it seems almost impossible to work any speedy radical reform. Yet many changes are being instituted in our best cities, and the persistent effort to manage the city as a business corporation rather than as a political engine is producing many good results. The large and growing urban population has thrown the burden of government upon the city—a burden which it was entirely unprepared for—and there have sprung up sudden evils which are difficult to eradicate. Only persistent effort, loyalty, sacrifice, and service, all combined with wisdom, can finally accomplish the reforms needed in cities. There is a tendency everywhere for people to get closer to the government, and to become more and more a part of it.[[1]] Our representative system has enabled us to delegate authority to such an extent that people have felt themselves irresponsible for all government, except one day in the year, when they vote at the polls; we need, instead, a determination to govern 365 days in the year, and nothing short of this perpetual interest of the people will secure to them the rights of self-government. Even then it is necessary that every citizen shall vote at every election.

Republicanism in Other Countries.—The remarkable spread of forms of republican government in the different nations of the world within the present century has been unprecedented. Every independent nation in South America to-day has a republican form of government. The Republic of Mexico has made some progress in the government of the people, and the dependencies of Great Britain all over the world have made rapid progress in local self-government. In Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, we find many of the most advanced principles and practices of free government.

It is true that many of these nations calling themselves republics have not yet guaranteed the rights and privileges of a people to any greater extent than they would have done had they been only constitutional monarchies; for it must be maintained at all times that it depends more upon the characteristics of the people—upon their intelligence, their social conditions and classes, their ideas of government, and their character—what the nature of their government shall be, than upon the mere form of government, whether that be aristocracy, monarchy, or democracy.