The idea of allowing citizens in their wards to elect representatives, who should wield all the powers vested in English, French or German town councils, was regarded by Americans as savouring of suicidal recklessness. To trust the elected representatives of the people in an American city, as we trust the town councils of Birmingham and Glasgow, seems rash and reckless to the American statesman. A very thoughtful writer in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science four years ago, singled out the English municipal system as one which no sane American would dream of applying to a great American city. He said:—
It may be safely said that this whole organisation of the Birmingham government is an exaggeration of the features which have had the worst effects in the United States. It must make the mouth of a Tammany chief water to think of such a simplification of his labours and increase of the opportunities for plunder.
Notwithstanding this, American observers have followed Mr. Chamberlain in declaring that Birmingham is the best governed city of the world. That, however, in no way reassures the American pessimist, who has put on record his conviction that “the vicious principles evolved in English municipal government will overcome any safeguard, and that it is only a question of time when English cities have a taste of what New York has been through.” The result of this deep-rooted conviction in the American mind, that the elect of the people is certain to steal if he gets a chance, was that city governments came into existence dominated by the one desire to paralyse in advance the city council, to limit its opportunities of stealing, and place it more or less at the mercy of the State Legislatures. The result of this system born of cowardice and lack of faith was to transfer almost all power in New York from the city authorities to Tammany Hall. Tammany, in theory at least, was broad based upon the people’s will, nor was there any limitation to the authority of the Boss.
After a time the absurdity of this system, and the ruinous results which followed, forced upon the minds of the more intelligent citizens the fact that something must be done, and that at any cost. Some centre of local authority must be created which could be trusted not to steal. Mr. Seth Low explains and defends the establishment of the Tsar-Mayor on the theory that cities in their organic capacity are more accurately described as large corporations than as small states. He says:—
The better results flowing from this theory are easily made clear. Americans are sufficiently adept in the administration of large business enterprises to understand that, in any such undertaking, some one man must be given the power of direction and the choice of his chief assistants; they understand that power and responsibility must go together from the top to the bottom of every successful business organisation. Consequently, when it began to be realised that a city was a business corporation rather than an integral part of the State, the unwillingness to organise the city upon the line of concentrated power in connection with concentrated responsibility began to disappear. The charter of the city of Brooklyn is probably as advanced a type as can be found of the results of this mode of thinking. In Brooklyn the executive side of the city government is represented by the mayor and the various heads of departments. The legislative side consists of a common council of nineteen members, twelve of whom are elected from three districts, each having four aldermen, the remaining seven being elected, as aldermen at large by the whole city. The people elect three city officers, besides the board of aldermen—the mayor, who is the real as well as the nominal head of the city, the comptroller, who is practically the book-keeper of the city, and the auditor, whose audit is necessary for the payment of every bill against the city, whether large or small. The mayor appoints absolutely, without confirmation by the common council, all the executive heads of departments. He appoints, for example, the police commissioner, the commissioner of city works, the corporation counsel or counsellor at law, the city treasurer, the tax collector, and, in general, all the officials who are charged with executive duties. These officials, in turn, appoint their own subordinates, so that the principle of defined responsibility permeates the city government from top to bottom. The mayor also appoints the board of assessors, the board of education, and the board of elections. The executive officers appointed by the mayor are appointed for a term of two years—that is to say, for a term similar to his own.—Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” vol. i.
This Charter first came into effect in January, 1882, and Brooklyn has been governed by Tsar-Mayors ever since. Mr. Seth Low, who was the first Tsar-Mayor in America, and who subsequently served a second time, claims for it the virtues and vices of all despotisms. When you have a good Tsar, nothing can be better. When you have a bad Tsar, nothing can be worse. As he says, the Brooklyn system “made clear to the simplest citizen that the entire character of the city government depends upon the man chosen for the office of Mayor.” It is, of course, playing double or quits. If you get a good man, his immense power enables him to be potent for good, but if you get a bad one, Heaven help the city!
The Brooklyn system was adopted with modification in several towns, notably in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, and to a certain extent in Philadelphia. The same system was carried out to its ultimate extreme in the Charter of the City of Quincy, in Massachusetts. Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, of Boston, in the May number of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for 1893, thus explained the evolution of the Tsar-Mayor as it could be seen in the Quincy Charter:—
It was provided that the mayor should be the only executive official elected at all, and he by general vote of the city, so that he might be the embodiment of the whole administration and responsible for it. That he might be this, he was given the full power of appointment and removal of all subordinates except the school committee, as to whom even the radical framers of the charter shrank from encountering the popular prejudice. It was held that the separate election of officials, whether by popular vote or that of the council, is destructive of all subordination, of all firm or efficient administration, and of all personal responsibility. But the Quincy charter ran counter to another prejudice much more deeply rooted: the requirement of confirmation of the mayor’s appointments by the council or aldermen.
The New York charter of 1884 gave to the mayor the full power of appointment, though that of removal, which seems to be necessary to make the other effective, was still jealously withheld. The Quincy charter gives both powers in full measure. Another object aimed at, though with some compromises, was to get rid of boards or commissions, as overriding the mayor and destroying that personal responsibility which was regarded as so important to public opinion. One man in every place, that man directly responsible to the mayor alone, and the mayor himself to the people, at short intervals; this was the guiding theory. To obviate the almost morbid dread of one man power, it was provided that the mayor might be removed from office by a three-fourths vote of the council, and a new election ordered. The theory was developed by another provision wholly new in the practice of the country: that the heads of departments, as well as the mayor, should be required to be present at the sessions of the council, to explain the wants of administration, and to give a public account of their stewardship in response to the questions of individual members. It was expected that in this way the strength or weakness of the mayor would be made clear to the popular apprehension, and that a better and improving class of men would be chosen with a corresponding effect upon city affairs.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bradford was compelled to admit, what Mr. Charles Francis Adams had previously pointed out, that the experiment of the Tsar-Mayor was, in Quincy, by no means justified by its results. Mr. Bradford says:—