Professor Peabody on City Government.

To the February number of the Forum, Professor Francis G. Peabody contributes a thoughtful article on "A Case of Good City Government." Dresden is the model which is described. The first instinct of an American citizen is to act; the first instinct of a German citizen is to obey and as far as concerns the essentials of good city government, one feels that in the best German cities one has the most substantial administration of the world. The German method offers a contrast to that of the United States since the former is government for the sake of the city, and the latter is government for the sake of the officials.

In Dresden, each salaried alderman is responsible for a single department, or for several closely allied parts of the public business. He is elected to his office because of his knowledge and skill in a special field of municipal work, and takes charge of that department. Thus, city work offers to a young German a life career. An educated man makes a special study of water-works or building-laws or poor-relief. He learns the methods of the best European cities. He serves his time in the administration of some small town, and, perhaps, gets a place at the head of his chosen department in some small city, and tries to make that department a model of efficiency and economy; finally, he is promoted to the same work in one of the great cities of the kingdom. Here, if successful, he holds a life office with the assurance of a pension for himself and his family. Neither politics nor even residence affects a city government in its selection of such a man.

No one would argue that this business system makes German administration perfect but it is a stride in the right direction. You cannot get a good man without offering him a good place, and as long as the United States refuses to offer any worthy inducement to proper men, the present unsatisfactory state of municipal government will remain.

The rest of the article is devoted to a discussion of the various objections to the German system which present themselves most prominently to a citizen of the United States. In finishing, Professor Peabody remarks that the American people, who are certainly the quickest-witted of the nations, will not long be so dull as to keep a protective tariff on our way of municipal work for the sake of party politics. It may be a wise policy for us to shut out of the country the importation of good Saxon stockings, but at least we might have free trade in good Saxon ideas.