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eligible as before, the field of eligibility should be extended to include those who have served not less than one term as mayor in a city of not less than 50,000 inhabitants. The further principal reasons for this recommendation are the following:

The Proposed
Governor

1. The successful experience of American cities which have imported municipal officers from without solely on the ground of their demonstrated merit. Such alleged violation of home rule has always encountered violent opposition. Local patronage hunters and exponents of local pride, array themselves against the importation of outsiders, and home rulers urge the peculiar demands of "peculiar local conditions." Occasional mistakes are of course made, but I believe it can clearly be shown that they are not to be charged against the principle of selection. In one department of municipal administration, that of education, the selection of officials on merit without regard to residence has been accepted or tolerated and is now largely practiced in many of our cities. Washington itself, for instance, has contributed many of its best school teachers to positions of importance in the school system of other cities. Its home rulers and local pride experts do not object to this side of the application of the principle.

Heads of departments also have been occasionally sought by our larger cities. One of the most successful instances of what might be termed this principle of national selection for local office was the call of Col. George E. Waring to become street cleaning commissioner of New York. Violent opposition was made by all the local pride element, and there was the usual talk of the inability of the outsider to understand the peculiar conditions of our city. Without attempting at all points to understand these peculiar conditions, Col. Waring devoted himself to dealing with the public question of cleaning the streets. He disregarded the local judgment based on long experience, that the streets could not be cleaned and he cleaned them. But he went further, he aroused the citizens to an understanding of their local needs never before appreciated, and he brought the freshness of viewpoint of the outsider and the outsider's freedom from local entanglements and intolerance of long entrenched

local abuses. Thus it may fairly be contended that if the outsider labors under certain possible disadvantages at the start, he may bring other more than compensating advantages.

2. The experience of the larger German cities, generally admitted to be the best governed in the world, in drawing their mayors from among those who had earned experience and achieved distinction as mayors of smaller cities. The mayors of German cities are elected by the municipal council and it is a uniformly accepted principle to choose the mayors of larger cities from those who have successfully administered the affairs of smaller cities. The present mayor of Berlin, for instance, began his career, if I recall correctly, as mayor of Dusseldorf and was subsequently mayor of Leipsig. His success in both cities led the municipal council of Berlin to invite him to become its mayor. I learned that he was highly esteemed by those elements of the Berlin populace which might be peculiarly sensitive to any ignorance or indifference on the part of the chief executive to the local needs of the metropolis. The mayor of Frankfort also had service in two smaller cities before being called to take charge of the affairs of the most prosperous city of Germany.

German
Precedents

3. Our present conception of the qualifications for the office of chief municipal executive. A steadily increasing number of our citizens recognize that city government is a business which like all businesses demands special experience and training. We do not put a man at the head of a large business who has no expert knowledge of that business. The government of the national capital is a large business and its head should not be a novice at his trade. He should be appointed because he has had requisite experience and training in this particular branch of public service and has demonstrated his knowledge and ability. Those familiar with municipal progress in our country are aware of the increasing number of able municipal executives who are being developed in our cities. Such executives at the end of one or two terms have no opportunity in the line of their successful experience. From this wide field of eligibility might be appointed by the President one of pre

eminently successful achievement, who would be worthy of the high honor of being the chief executive of the national capital.

My final recommendation was the creation of a new municipal department, to be known as the department of housing and

Department of Housing and Labor

labor. My conviction of the need of such a department is based not merely upon my investigations in Washington, but also upon a ten years' study of conditions and needs in New York City, together with a somewhat extensive observation of the governments of the principal European capitals. It is my belief that there exists in Washington, and the same is true of all our large cities, the need of coordinating into an efficient, well administered department, all those instrumentalities for the protection of the independent industrial class which neither seeks nor desires charity and which at present receives wholly inadequate protection. For the victims of misfortune we have provided our department of charities. For the delinquent members of society, we have our department of corrections. But for those who are neither dependent nor delinquent, but through accident or misfortune may become either or both, we show the most meager public interest. Perhaps the most impressive and instructive lesson which came to me from ten years' residence in the most congested section of New York City, was the realization of the extent of the truth of the scriptural statement, "the affliction of the poor is their poverty." Pitfalls surround the poor which neither entrap nor endanger the well conditioned. If the poor man when out of work resorts to the employment agency, if in temporary embarrassment he goes to the pawnshop, or the loan company, or if in prosperity he joins a Mutual Benefit Society, the chances are that he will be exploited or swindled out of his hard earned money. Our increasing knowledge of sanitation and our recognition of its value have caused us to give the workman better care in his home and in his workshop. But the protection given to them should be much better, and in my judgment the service to that end might wisely be connected with the service for the safeguarding of the industrial class in the above mentioned

business relations. To make clearer my plan, may I comment briefly on the bureaus proposed in connection with this Department?

The Bureau of Statistics

The District of Columbia being both a city and territory should have the best features of both forms of government. A bureau of statistics fulfilling the functions of the state labor bureaus would, through its trained staff, investigate those industrial problems for which the District at present has no special machinery, and thereby facilitate a more thorough consideration of them by the public authorities than is possible under existing arrange

ments.

This bureau should enforce the laws regarding tenements, small houses, alley shacks and alleys. The recent experience of the New York City Tenement House Department shows that the supervision of these houses by a special department defines responsibility and brings better results than when a general building department controls all classes of private buildings.

Bureau of
Housing

Bureau of
Labor

This bureau would exercise the double function of the protection of the industrial classes and minor government employees in their dealings with employment agencies, pawnshops, and loan companies, and of the inspection of factories, workshops and stores. Employment agencies, pawn-shops, and loan companies in this country have thus far generally been under police oversight. Except for such police supervision the defects of these concerns are usually ignored or their correction is sought through private philanthropy. In Europe, on the contrary, their economic importance is so well recognized that employment agencies and pawn-shops are usually public institutions ably managed by trained officials.

Public
Employment
Agencies

Until recently public employment agencies were not a success in this country because of inadequate appropriations and political manipulation. The Massachusetts State Employment Bureau as at present administered, however, compares favorably

with European public agencies and its value to employers and employees throughout the state has led the Massachusetts legislature to authorize the opening of branches in the leading cities of the state. The time has perhaps not yet come for a public employment agency in Washington, but its existing private agencies should be placed under a bureau commissioned to promote and supervise the adjustment of the supply and demand of labor as well as to prevent frauds against employers and employees.

Municipal
Pawn-Shops

Pawn-shops are the laborer's chief resource for raising money in time of need. They are a business necessity under existing conditions, but their terms are oppressive, their rates of interest exorbitant, their contracts often purposely obscure or tricky. The public pawn-shops of Europe on the other hand, grant moderate loans upon reasonable conditions and are honestly managed in the interests of their customers. Equally satisfactory results have been achieved in this country through semiphilanthropic enterprises such as the Provident Loan Society of New York. But private philanthropy can not cover the entire field and the ends desired must be obtained through public pawn-shops like those of Europe or through comprehensive public supervision of private pawn-shops. The private pawnshops of Washington have the defects of their class. Their supervision should be not that of the police merely, but of an authority having the broader powers that I recommend for the above-named bureau.

Loan companies may be placed in the same category with pawn-shops since they make small loans to borrowers having limited means. Without detailing many complaints made to me of recording the special defects of these companies, I recommend for them the same comprehensive supervision as for pawnshops.

I have urged the importance of what might be termed constructive supervision of employment agencies, pawn-shops, and loan companies, because of the demoralizing effects of their methods upon those with whom they deal. In the last analysis the public as usual pays the bill for the poverty and

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