| County of....................., Dr., to Wellington Hay. | ||
| 1898, Sept. 22. To 7 days’ labor with deputy sheriff looking up stolen horse | $14.00 | |
| To paid all expenses per above | 15.60 | |
| $29.60 | ||
In this instance, Mr. Hay, a deputy sheriff, was charging the county for chasing up his own horse. The county treasurer who paid this claim was the one who, in spite of very definite provisions of law, had failed to designate the banks which should have custody of the county funds, and deposited them with a favored institution which paid the county no interest; who failed to keep any cash book or any account with any bank even on the stubs of his check book; who allowed at least one creditor of the county to collect an illegal claim four times. This is the county in which the county judge was found to have his own private law offices elaborately furnished with all the up-to-date filing devices and blanks, all at the public expense; in which the coroner reports that between the 13th and the 19th of May he had worked fifteen days and collected in full from the county. The records of practically every other officer in the county revealed similar irregularities and a similar lack of any fine sense of the interests of the public.
Did it just happen that the people of county “A” or county “B” elected none but law-breakers to office? Was it the character of the officers which alone was responsible for “inefficiency, indifference to law and neglect?” Would the condition have been different with another average set of men in office?
This is certain: that upon the officers of county “A” was imposed the duty of enforcing laws which were both intricate and difficult for a layman to find, and when found, to understand. But over and above all this, there was no constant discipline of a responsible organization and no certain and swift penalty for non-compliance with or disobedience of the law.
So difficult is the case, in fact, that it would seem from reports emanating from different parts of the country, that county officers have long ceased to worry about the legality of most of their acts. A common practice is not to investigate the law at all but to look back over the work of predecessors and follow in their tracks—an easier and more natural method for the untrained mind than to seek legal authority for action at its fountainhead in the statutes. But it makes a joke of the statutes! And when, in the absence of a powerful executive head, these written laws, which constitute most important connecting link, between the various county officers, are broken, the directing hand of the state is perforce withdrawn.
The failures of government in these counties were due in no small measure at least to the system, rather than to the individual men. No mere “good” man would necessarily have been better qualified or more inclined to look up the law and follow it implicitly. For it is not of such qualities that political “goodness,” from the voters’ standpoint, consists!
Nor are these minor delinquencies the sole products of the evil system. In Hudson County, New Jersey, with a citizenry somewhat less alert and with state officials a little less vigilant, the essential factors present in the counties mentioned gave rise to positive conscienceless and willful waste of public funds. The story is illuminating:
The building of the court house was begun under an act of the legislature which authorized a committee of the board of chosen freeholders to purchase such lands and erect such county buildings as might be needed. The committee was empowered to appoint its own counsel and architect to go ahead and build. The only limitation upon its powers was that it should spend not to exceed four fifths of one per cent. of the county ratables. This was a restriction which, under the amount of ratables as of the time when the project was authorized, would have permitted a maximum expenditure of about $1,580,000. But before even the contracts had been let the growth in valuations had so increased that the committee might legally spend $7,500,000.
The original figure for the cost of the court house had been $990,000, but before the citizens of the county were aroused it reached $3,328,016. Investigation revealed such extravagance and carelessness with the county’s money in every detail, that the legislature in 1911 abolished the committee and created a court house commission, the members of which were to be appointed by the Justice of the Supreme Court.
The building of county court houses under just such auspices and with a similar outcome is a characteristic bit of local history the country over. But county shortcomings do not always stop at willful extravagance. Sometimes it is a tale of grafting of the grossest sort, of which typical conditions a story is related by Herbert Quick, who had charge of an investigation into the affairs of Woodbury County, Iowa, some twenty years ago. The county supervisors apparently had traveled unobserved, unchecked, along the same road but further, as the officers of county “A” and the court house committee of Hudson County. Says Mr. Quick: