It has, however, been made the subject of a very painstaking and lucid analysis by Dr. Albert Shaw, whose “Studies of Municipal Administration in the Old World and the New” entitle him to speak with some authority on the matters dealt with by the Charter. His analysis of the Charter was published in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1897, under the title of “The Municipal Programme of Greater New York.” Mr. De Witt published his clear and concise idea of the Greater New York in Munsey’s Magazine, under the title of “Moulding the Metropolis.” The Charter itself, with its 1,620 sections, has been published in popular form at 10 cents by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The text of the Charter, with the aid of Dr. Shaw’s and Mr. De Witt’s analyses, enables any one to form a tolerably clear idea as to what the Charter does and what the Charter means.
Mr. Croker repeatedly assured me, before the recent Mayoral contest began, that the Charter was a monstrosity and an absurdity, that the system of government which it established must inevitably break down, and that not even an archangel could make it work satisfactorily. Mr. Croker can hardly be said to be an impartial judge, but his verdict is sufficiently in accord with that of Dr. Shaw to justify very grave misgivings as to the prospect before the second city of the world.
During my stay in New York I was simply besieged by interviewers, begging me to tell them what I thought of the Charter. I turned a deaf ear to their solicitations, preferring to make a more careful study of the Charter itself with the advantage of the analysis of Dr. Shaw. Even now I rather shrink from expressing an opinion, lest it should be misconstrued as implying any claim on my part to sit in judgment on those who are saddled with the responsibility of governing New York. But when doctors differ, the people decide, and when local experts are at hopeless variance as to the merits or demerits of the Charter, it may perhaps be permitted to a British onlooker, even at a distance of 3,000 miles, to put on record the way in which the Charter strikes him. If this should not be denied me, I may say at once that the Charter seems to have written on its face thoroughgoing distrust of the people. The aspect of the Charter is black with despair. It is far worse as an expression of democratic despair than the Brooklyn Charter, for the Brooklyn Charter at least trusted the Tsar-Mayor, whereas the New York Charter shrinks even from doing that.
In explaining the provisions of the Charter, I prefer to quote from Dr. Shaw’s analysis. He says:—
First comes the mayor, who is entitled the chief executive. He is to be elected for four years and is not eligible for an immediate re-election, and his salary is to be 15,000 dols. a year. The business of city administration is divided into eighteen executive departments. These are the departments of finance, of law, of police, of water supply, of highways, of street-cleaning, of sewers, of public buildings, lighting and supplies, of bridges, of parks, of building, of public charities, of correction, of fire, of docks and ferries, of taxes and assessments, of education, and of health.
The members of all these boards, with one exception, are appointed by the Mayor, not elected by the people. The one exception is the City Comptroller, who is at the head of the Finance Department. He is elected at the same time as the Mayor. The Mayor also appoints all the members of the five school boards, which look after education in the five boroughs of Greater New York:—
The system provided for in the new charter puts the executive government wholly into the hands of the eighteen departments, which are practically supreme in their respective eighteen spheres, except as they are limited by two important groups, or boards—namely, the board of estimate and apportionment and the board of public improvements. One discovers with some surprise that the ordinance-making power, which would nominally belong exclusively to the municipal assembly, is, in the Greater New York charter, conferred upon all the executive departments.
Where then, it will be asked, does the Municipal Assembly come in, for there is a Municipal Assembly which is divided into two chambers? To which the answer is that the Municipal Assembly is practically reduced to the function of a debating society; for, says Dr. Shaw:—
The eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power; the board of public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of income and on that of disbursement.
It is true that the budget must be voted by the Municipal Assembly, which on that occasion sits as one body. But its control is practically nil. The real financial control is vested in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Mr. F. V. Green, writing in Scribner for October, 1896, points out that the framers of this board carefully avoided the principle of direct election. He says:—