In Louisiana, the parish authority corresponding to the board of supervisors or commissioners is the police jury, which is elected by wards very much on the principle of the New England town.
In the country beyond the Northwest Territory, the clash of New England and southern influences was met by an interesting compromise. In Illinois, for instance, the earliest settlement had been made under southern auspices. The county type of local government was therefore established, but of the style employed in Ohio and Indiana rather than in Kentucky. In 1826, however, the justices were made elective by precincts and later the township was made a corporation for the purposes of school, road, justice and poor relief administration. By 1848 the “town idea” had grown strong enough to force the adoption of a provision in the new constitution for a plan to afford each county an option between the two systems. The northern counties quickly adopted the township plan, while the southern ones clung to the original forms. Wisconsin at an even earlier date (1841) had effected a similar compromise which, however, was swept away seven years later when the township system was made mandatory by the constitution. At a later period Missouri (1879), Nebraska (1883), Minnesota (1878) and Dakota (1883) permitted the adoption of similar optional laws.
In the new Southwest, the Northwest, the Rocky Mountain region and the far West, owing in part to the comparative sparsity of settlement and in part to the thinning out of the definite historical influences, the county has acquired a greater importance than anywhere in the country and the towns or townships, while they have been erected in a number of the states, play but an insignificant part in local government. When Texas became an independent republic, the American county system was substituted for the earlier Mexican local government. Before the middle of the nineteenth century counties had been established in New Mexico, Utah and Oregon; ten years later in Nebraska and Washington; by 1870 in Colorado, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Arizona.
And so, the institution of the county has been driven westward in obedience to precedent and through the instinct for imitation. Of thoughtful foresight, of definite planning for a serviceable career, about the same measure was applied as in the case of Topsy, who “jest growed.” It could not be otherwise. Local government in pioneer days had to be thrown together more or less on the “hurry-up” plan. On the western prairies as in colonial Virginia, public needs were so limited that it really mattered comparatively little what agencies were employed.
Counties once established acquired a tendency to “stick” tenaciously to nearly their original form. Even in the seventeenth century the county in England was well into a decline. Its disintegration had begun with the growth of populous centers, that demanded more government, both in quantity and in variety. The seven Saxon kingdoms whence counties grew, had ceased to be either natural or convenient self-governing units. In a later period they have ceased to be even important subdivisions for the central administrative departments, and they have been crossed and recrossed by the lines of sanitary and other districts until the original county may be said to be scarcely distinguishable.
In America even sharper and more pervasive social forces have been assaulting this ancient institution. In our thinking of the Industrial Revolution it has been customary to dwell upon its effects in urban districts. This movement made the modern city. But its effect did not stop there. Modern mechanical devices have also made the original county boundary lines obsolete. Steam railway lines have brought into close communication points which were once too distant to be traversed easily and often, under all sorts of conditions. Electric railways, in many instances have supplemented the process. The automobile, particularly of the cheapest type, has brought within easy reach of the court house points which a hundred years ago, when the stage-coach was the standard of locomotion, were too remote for frequent communication. And, finally, the extension of mail facilities and the telephone have minimized the importance of face-to-face business intercourse beyond anything ever dreamed of when counties were first made.
Counties as we see them on the map often fail to take account of the sweeping changes in the character of populations. On the western prairies they were formed for a sparsely distributed people following chiefly agriculture. In the midst of these regions at numerous points have sprung up great centers of manufacture and commerce like Chicago, Kansas City, St. Paul, and Omaha. In their train have followed the multifarious problems of the modern city, which require a very particular sort of governmental treatment.
To these conditions the county as an institution has consistently maintained an attitude of stolid indifference. Division of old counties goes on from year to year. (Bronx county separated from New York in 1914, to the accompaniment of a costly new court house and several hundred new jobs and no benefit to the taxpayers and citizens except a heavy increase in taxation.) But who can recall two counties that have consolidated? Such an exhibition of modernity and of the spirit of progressivism it is apparently not in the nature of the county to afford.