were authorized, there were special provisions for partially consolidated city and county government for certain large cities, such as St. Louis, San Francisco, and Denver. But the California amendment of 1911 and the Maryland home rule amendment of 1915 authorize any county to elect a charter board to frame a county charter, subject to approval by the electors.

The California amendment provides in detail the procedure for preparing a county charter and its contents; and further amendments to the constitution have since been adopted with special reference to conditions in Alameda county. Under the county home rule amendment four counties in California have framed and adopted local county charters: Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties in 1913, and Butte and Tehama counties in 1917. Under the Los Angeles county charter, the only elective county officers are five supervisors, sheriff, district attorney, assessor and justices of the peace. Other county officers are appointed by the supervisors, and constables are appointed by the sheriff, all from civil service lists. The San Bernardino charter provided for the consolidation of offices, and for the appointment of all other officers by the board of supervisors; but a charter amendment adopted in 1915 restored the elective system. In Butte and Tehama counties, offices have been consolidated.

No Maryland county has as yet adopted a charter; but the new Baltimore home rule charter provides for a partial consolidation of city and county offices.

A proposed constitutional amendment to authorize county home rule charters was introduced in the Ohio General Assembly at the session of 1919.

Towns and townships. Constitutional provisions on town and township government are comparatively limited. In about a third of the states there are provisions for the organization of townships by general law. These are mostly states in the middle west, but some are southern and far western states, where the township system has not been fully established, as North and South Carolina, California, Idaho, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. A few states (Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota) provide for an optional system of township government. On the other hand in the New England states, where towns are of most importance, and in the Middle Atlantic states, there is seldom any mention of them in the state constitutions.

In the states with constitutional provisions there are sometimes brief provisions about town officers; but in the main the organization and powers of towns and townships are regulated by statute law. Constitutional restrictions on municipal debt, and other general provisions. as to public officers, frequently apply to towns and townships as well as other municipalities.

New England towns are the most important. Except in the unsettled parts of northern Maine and New Hampshire, the whole area

of each state is formed into towns and cities. The towns are irregular areas of from 20 to 30 square miles, including both rural territory and. more compact village settlements. The greater importance of New England towns as compared with those in other parts of the country is due in part to the exercise of some functions elsewhere performed by county officers, but more to the fact that New England towns have substantially as extensive powers as cities and villages. In Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont some villages and boroughs (in Connecticut also cities) have been organized within towns, but this is exceptional. There are thus many towns which include urban communities of considerable size. In Massachusetts one town has a population of nearly 40,000.

The primary organ of town government in New England is the town meeting of legal voters. Annual town meetings are usually held in the spring, and special meetings at other times. These are formally summoned by warrant, with a statement of the business to be transacted. At these meetings a moderator is elected as chairman, town officers are elected, reports of officers are presented, and appropriations, taxes, and local by-laws are discussed and voted.

In the smaller towns there is usually a fair attendance of voters at the town meetings; and there is often active and interesting debate. But in the larger towns a full attendance is impossible, and the number present is often small; and the business is apt to be mainly a formal ratification of recommendations by town officers and committees. In some towns a committee on appropriations is selected beforehand to report on the annual budget.

There is a considerable number of town boards and other officials but no one chief executive officer. The most important officers are the selectmen (from three to nine), who act as a general administrative board. Most towns have also a school committee, board of health and overseers of the poor. Larger towns have also water, library, and park boards. Each town has also a town clerk, assessors, treasurer, constables, and often a considerable list of minor officials, such as pound keepers, fence viewers, etc. Most town officers serve without pay; but in the larger places paid officials have been introduced for the more important places.

The New England town remains an active agency of local government; and in small communities of native stock continues to give reasonable satisfaction. But in larger industrial towns, with many voters of new racial elements, it is not so successful. The combination of all branches of local government in one organization has distinct advantages over a series of independent local authorities. But there is need for a more active centralized control over the various boards and officials than can be exercised in a public town meeting under present day social conditions.

In the large group of northern and central states from New York and New Jersey westward to Kansas and the Dakotas, general systems of towns and townships have been established. In most of these states practically the entire area is divided into towns, except that cities (and) sometimes villages) have absorbed the town government. In the older

easterly states of this group, the towns, like those of New England, are irregular in shape and vary a good deal in size. From Ohio westward the standard township is the geographical area of that name, approximately six miles square, originally formed as a surveying unit for the public lands ceded to the United States, and commonly known as the congressional township; but in many cases the boundaries of congressional townships do not coincide with those of the civil towns.

Such towns and townships in these central states are, however, of much less importance than the New England towns; and their importance is declining. This is partly due to the greater and increasing importance of county government; but is more largely the result of the separate organization of villages, boroughs, and cities, with their own. local government for the special problems of these urban and semiurban communities, leaving to the township only a few and mostly unimportant functions. Another factor has been the artificial and geometrical nature of the township area, and the lack of social unity or self-consciousness. Most of the towns have thus a small population, largely agricultural; but in a few states towns include cities of considerable population.

In Illinois and the Dakotas some counties are not organized under the township system (except for school purposes); and in Missouri and Nebraska less than a fourth of the counties have the township system. In Illinois and Indiana, and generally in Ohio and Nebraska, cities, and in most of the central states all villages, remain part of the township; but in most states cities are independent of the townships, and are vested with town functions, and this is also true of boroughs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and villages in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas.

For the government of these towns or townships, the state laws provide for town meetings of voters in the northerly tier of statesNew York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. But as there is little to be done at these meetings except to elect town officers, the attendance at the business meetings in the great majority of towns is very slight; and the town meetings have none of the vitality or active interest shown in New England. In the southerly tier of states-Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, there is no provision for town meetings, although there are of course town elections at which some questions are at times submitted to a referendum vote of the electors.

Two main types may be recognized in the organization of town officers. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas (the first three states with no town meetings), there is a town board or committee, somewhat similar to the New England selectmen (although that term is not used in any of these states.) In the other states there is a single principal officer of the town (though he does not have any definite authority over other elective town officers), assisted in some matters by a town board. In states with the large county boards of supervisors, the principal town officer is the supervisor, who is also a member of the county board. In Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma (where there are small boards of county commissioners) the

principal town officer is called the township trustee. The statutory duties of the town supervisors and trustees vary in different states. In New York, Illinois, and Missouri they act as town treasurers; in Michigan, and Kansas as town assessors, besides having other functions. The town trustees in Indiana, besides having the usual duties, acts also as trustee for the school township.

Other elective town officers include clerks, treasurers, assessors, road commissioners, justices of the peace, constables, and occasionally one or two more; but few of the numerous boards and minor officials of the New England towns appear in the central states.

In most of the central states towns are further divided into school districts; and villages and cities are freely organized; while other special districts are frequently established. These will be noted in a later section of this chapter.

In the southern and far western states, counties are divided into precincts or districts for various purposes; and usually into several overlapping series of districts. In some cases these districts elect local officials, while in others they are merely convenient areas of administration; but except in the case of villages and cities and some special districts, such local districts are seldom incorporated. In a few states (California and North Carolina) the term township has been applied to such districts.

Villages, boroughs, and cities. In the United States as a whole there are more than 10,000 incorporated municipalities variously styled incorporated towns, villages, boroughs, and cities. These are compactly settled communities, ranging from hamlets of a few hundred population to metropolitan cities such as Chicago and New York. Comparatively few village corporations have been formed in New England, as the town governments serve the needs of the village settlements; but elsewhere separate municipal organizations for even small villages are common.

No sharp distinction can be drawn between the different terms for such municipalities. In Kansas and some other states even the smallest municipalities are called cities. In other states the smaller places are called towns, villages, or boroughs; and the larger are called cities; but there is no uniformity as to the dividing line. In New York and Pennsylvania the minimum population for cities is 10,000; in other states this ranges from 5,000 (in Ohio, Virginia, and Louisiana), to 2,000 in a number of states, and to 250 in Kansas. The term borough is applied to the smaller municipalities in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Such municipalities are usually organized on petition (generally to a county officer) and a local popular vote; but in a few states they may be organized by the county board without a vote in the community affected. A change from a village to a city likewise, in most states, requires a local referendum; and in Massa

chusetts all cities must be established by act of the state legisla

ture.

The government of these municipalities necessarily shows wide variations. Villages and boroughs are usually organized under a general law in each state, by which there is a board of trustees or council (of from three to nine members), usually elected at large, with a president or mayor with some powers as chief executive. Usually there is also a clerk, treasurer, street commissioner, and chief police officer, and in many places assessors, attorneys, and other officers. The functions of villages generally include. care of the streets, police, water supply, sanitation, and fire protection, the power to pass local ordinances, and often other municipal affairs.

For cities there is no general type of organization, even in a single state. In some states special charters and laws are still enacted for each city. In most states legislation on city government must be by general law; but by passing laws applying only to classes of cities or by optional laws, different forms of organization are provided for different cities. In thirteen states (mostly west of the Mississippi river, but including Michigan, Ohio, and Maryland), there are constitutional provisions authorizing cities (and in some states also villages) to frame and adopt home rule charters for their local government.

Amid the numerous diversities, three main types of organization may be distinguished. The most common is still that of a mayor and council (the latter usually elected by wards), with a varying number of administrative officials and boards, some elected and some appointed. In some of the eastern states and in Indiana the tendency in cities with this form since about 1880 has been to increase the powers of the mayor, and to centralize authority in his hands; but there are many qualifications and exceptions.

Since about 1900 two other more centralized types of municipal government have been introduced on a considerable scale. Several hundred cities and villages in all parts of the country have adopted the commission plan, under which the administrative powers of the municipal government are vested in a board, usually of five elected commissioners (sometimes three or seven). One member, elected as mayor, is chairman of the board, but he has little or no special power.

More recently the city manager plan has been adopted in a number of cities. This has usually been based on a small council elected at large, to determine general policies, and to select a trained city-manager, as the administrative head of the city govern

ment.

Under these later plans, however, the local courts and schools, and sometimes other functions, usually remain under elected officials, not under the control of the commission or city-manager.