tion of officers and executive committee, and I will call on Mr. John A. Butler of Milwaukee, chairman of the committee on nominations if he has the report. MR. BUTLER, Milwaukee: Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen: On behalf of the nominating committee I beg to submit the following report: FOR OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1908-1909 President-CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, Baltimore. First Vice-President-CHARLES RICHARDSON, Philadelphia. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE HORACE E. DEMING, Chairman, New York City. ROBERT TREAt Paine, Jr., Boston. HARVEY STUART CHASE, Boston. ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, Cambridge. CHARLES S. DEFOREST, New Haven. DUDLEY TIBBETTS, Troy. GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, New York. MERWIN K. HART, Utica. CLARENCE L. HARPER, Philadelphia. J. L. HUDSON, Detroit. JOHN A. BUTLER, Milwaukee. DAVID P. JONES, Minneapolis. DWIGHT F. DAVIS, St. Louis. JAMES H. CAUSEY, Denver. FRANK J. SYMMES, San Francisco. CHARLES D. WILLARD, Los Angeles. And I take the liberty of suggesting that the leading thoughts of the league ought to be applied to all of our great cities, and I think in the future a still more careful canvass ought to be made of the convention in order to make additions to the executive committee of active, militant, vigilant reformers to carry the doctrine abroad through the country. THE CHAIRMAN: You have heard the report of the nominating committee. What is your pleasure as to the acceptance of the report and the election of the officers named? Upon motion the report was adopted and the officers therein named were duly elected. The Chairman: Mr. Deming having arrived we will now go back to the executive committee and ask Mr. Deming to present his report. Net Gains Mr. Deming: Mr. Chairman: On March 31 last, when our fiscal year ended, we had 1442 enrolled members and 90 contributing members That was a net gain during the last fiscal year of 184. Since the 31st of March up to the first of November of this year we have made a further net gain of 76 members. Up to the first of September of the current year our rate of progress over the year before was nearly 50 per cent. In September we fell off badly, and in October, when the presidential campaign was on we made a slump; we scarcely increased at all. This illustrates once more that if you have a national campaign going on at the same time that you attempt to have a municipal campaign, the municipal campaign is usually overwhelmed. Our affiliated membership consists as you know of clubs and organizations that join us as organized bodies. We had a year ago one hundred and thirty-five such organizations on our roll. Their membership was in round numbers one hundred and eleven thousands. We have now one hundred and fifty-four such affiliated members, with an enrolled membership in round numbers of one hundred and forty-six thousands. Besides those we have mentioned, there are thirty organizations whose memberships we have not yet been able to verify. To have got this increase in cooperation and active sympathy with our work on the part of so many organizations throughout the country is extremely encouraging. As to our finances, the story is very simple. During the last fiscal year our receipts were approximately ten thousand dollars, and our expendi tures were approximately ten thousand dollars, we carrying over a working balance from the year before. Since the first of April we have received about six thousand dollars and have spent about six thousand dollars. We usually spend pretty nearly up to the limit of all we receive. We think that is our duty. That is why we are given the money. You may be interested to hear something of some of the results of the work of the League as the news of it comes to the central office, and a little of the methods that we use in some branches of our work. Results of the We have what we call a clipping service. Some of you may not know what that means, but if you will look at a batch of things like that (displaying some clippings) you will understand. There were seven of those sent out this last year; we could easily send out seventy if we had the means. Now, each of these sets of clippings contains in convenient shape editorials, news items, short quotations pertinent quotations from the speeches and writings of distinguished men, approving or illustrating our principles, extracts from papers that have appeared in our proceedings, crisp comments upon the various phases of our work. These clippings are sent to the newspapers all over the country. Does this do any good? If you should sit in our central office and read the editorials and the news columns of the newspapers which are received there from every part of the country you would find that the press is each year giving more publicity to our ideas and more and more advocating them in their respective communities. It is a most valuable thing, this clipping service, and it is producing most marked results. The Baldwin There is another thing we have been able to do through the generosity of the wife of one of our members. We have been giving each year a prize appropriately named the Baldwin prize after Mr. William H. Baldwin, whose untimely death many of us mourn, for the best essay on a subject directly related to city government in the United States. The competitors are confined to undergraduates at colleges where there is a recognized course of instruction in municipal government. This is now the fourth year that this competition has been held. It has aroused a great interest in municipal questions among the students in a number of our different colleges and has already produced a marked influence on the instruction the colleges are giving in civics and particularly in municipal government. The terms of the competition and the advertisement of the fact of the competition are in charge of our sub-committee on instruction in the colleges in municipal government. That committee is each year sending inquiries to different colleges and universities to ascertain whether they have these courses and their students can compete for the prize. The growth of college and university instruction in municipal government and of the demand for such instruction are most gratifying. There will be a special report by the committee on that subject later. I think you will be interested in the topic which the executive committee has selected for this year's prize. There is nothing particularly academic about this year's topic: "A STUDY OF THE PRACTICAL OPERATIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN SOME LARGE AMERICAN CITY." Competitors may select, as their field of study, any city of the United States having a population of not less than 300,000; essays must not exceed 10,000 words in length; and it is suggested that the essays may advantageously deal with the following topics: I. A very brief introductory outline of the city's political develop ment. 2. The relation of the city to the state, including a study of the city charter, a summary of the powers possessed by the city as a corporation, and a statement of those municipal functions which are directly exercised by the state authorities. 3. A sketch of the present framework of the city government, including a discussion of the division of powers among the various organs of government, executive and legislative; and a study of the relations of these organs. 4. An examination of the administrative service of the city, the structure and functions of the various city departments, the methods of appointment and removal from office and so forth. 5. The methods of nomination and election to elective city offices; the means whereby the accountability of officials to the electors is secured; and the relation of the aims and methods of local party organizations to these features. When a young man can answer these five questions he will have had a pretty good course in municipal government. They are questions which every citizen should ask and answer in regard to his own city. 6. A statement of the writer's own views as to the governmental powers which a city should possess, the framework of government that would be most advantageous, the proper methods of selecting public officials, the proper relations between the various organs performing governmental functions; and the means by which the suggested improvements may be achieved. Due consideration should be given in this part of the essay to the feasibility and advisability of municipal reorganization along the lines of the Galveston, Des Moines, Newport and other plans. The executive committee believes that intelligent answers to these questions by a number of students in different colleges and universities would be of great practical benefit in very many ways. The requests that we have been receiving for several years not only from this country but from other countries for our books and leaflets, for copies of our proceedings, for our committee reports, for general information and advice in our chosen field have become so numerous that we are simply unable to respond. We have not the means of re Requests for Help sponding. We have not the office force to respond. These requests come from our own dependencies; from cities in India; from Germany, from France, from Spain. They come from numerous libraries, from hundreds of persons interested in the study of municipal government. The demand for our publications has exhausted all the editions of the earlier volumes of our annual meetings. We can no longer supply them and we receive frequent expressions of regret on the part of those who wish to study the various phases of the city problem that they can no longer obtain any printed copies of our proceedings. Let me just give you some specimens of the demands for information and for our literature here in this country. Here is a man who writes from one of the smaller cities of Massachusetts asking us to supply him with certain documents named, in order that he may spread the knowledge of our principles and persuade additional members to join us. Here is a bulletin from a board of trade of one of our smaller cities speaking with pride of the fact that it is an affiliated member, and calling upon the citizens of the town to spread the ideas we are advocating. Here is a letter from a little city in South Carolina in which we are thanked for having responded to a prior request for certain publications and saying that by their aid the writer has been able to arouse a degree of public spirit that he hopes will produce and have a lasting effect upon that little city. Here is a letter from Nebraska, from an institution of learning out there asking for some of our documents, naming the documents, in order that the students of that university may have an opportunity to get the information which we are furnishing. Here is a letter from a city in Missouri inclosing a clipping from a local newspaper showing how, inspired by our Baldwin prize, a resident there has instituted a series of prizes to be competed for by the seniors in the high school on practical civic topics affecting the home city. Here is a letter from a little city in New Jersey saying that the writer has observed the plan for municipal accounting that we have been advocating—and we were practically the first organization in this country to do so-how it has worked in a neighboring city and it has worked so well he proposes to see and he is an alderman, perhaps he can do something—if he cannot have it introduced in his own city. Here is a letter from Cuba, announcing that the projected municipal law which has been recently submitted there to be acted upon "is founded upon the modern current of scientific ideas, and particularly upon the sound principles of local government endorsed by the National Municipal League of the United States." And here is a letter from a little town in the interior of Illinois expressing what would be surprising to us if we had not had so many similar instances in our experience that the writer has used up all the pamphlets and literature that had been sent in response to previous requests in spite of exercising the greatest care and discrimination and could we possibly let him have so and so many more to be used for these purposes. |