350 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
an underlying purpose pervading all, which gave them a unity they would have otherwise lacked, namely, the endeavor to adapt the form of our municipal institutions to the changing conditions of city life.
The committee preparing these bills was fully aware of the relatively subordinate place which should be given to questions of forms of government; but it recognized the fact that a form of government poorly adapted to the problems with which it has to deal is a source of weakness in the body politic. The committee declared that " we have begun to realize that city problems are not of the same nature as state and national problems; but we have not drawn the further and more fruitful conclusion that this difference calls for a difference in the form of government"
It is in this connection that the bill reorganizing city councils marked a step in the right direction. Framed in a conservative spirit, it was designed to preserve the point of contact between the present and the proper system. It did not attempt to make a radical change from a bicameral to a single-chambered local legislature ; it merely proposed to rehabilitate the present system, profiting by the experience of other cities. Our present legislative system is the cause of an enormous waste of energy, combined with which there is a complete lack of responsibility to the com- munity as a whole. The attempt to enforce responsibility, and to elect the best type of men to councils by working within ward lines, has proved to be a disastrous failure. Political responsi- bility is inherently different from business responsibility, and must be enforced by methods which only remotely resemble the enforce- ment of responsibility in private corporate management. Instead of trying to develop a progressive municipal policy out of the dickerings and compromises of local interests, we must endeavor to give expression to the highest standards of the community as a whole. Instead of judging a man's efficiency by the number of special favors obtained for his small district, we must come to gauge it by his contribution to the welfare of the whole com- munity. Instead of constructing a system in which representa- tives from constituencies arranged upon one plan are played off against representatives elected by districts based upon another
