For the government of the city. 3.19 For maintaining hospitals and correctional institutions. 2.25 1.92 Miscellaneous. 1.54 .56 Libraries... TOPICS FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 1. Tell in your own words what Mr. Baker means by the quotation at the beginning of this chapter. 2. Make a list of any community problems which you think should be solved by your own local government. Give reasons for your selection. 3. What advantages has home rule for cities and towns over the old method of piecemeal legislation granted by the State Legislature? 4. Give the advantages and the disadvantages of the following forms of city government: Mayor and Council; Commission; City Manager. 5. Make a chart of the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of your city or town government, and show what community affairs each department controls. 6. Find out the names of your city or town officers, their duties, their terms of office, their salaries. Are they elected or appointed? 7. Write a paragraph describing the kind of man best fitted for each of the different offices in your local government. 8. Report to the class concerning the work of your Chamber of Commerce. Give an illustration of the way it coöperates with your local government. 9. Your city wishes to hold an exhibition to show the details of its work. Make a poster to be used for this exhibit illustrating some such subject as health, protection of life and property, city planning, or transportation. Write out instructions for the holding of such an exhibit. 10. The table on page 345 gives the governmental cost payments for each of the leading departments of all the cities of the United States having a population of 30,000 or over in 1923. The payments are given by totals, by per capita, and by the per cent of the total spent for each purpose. From this table find out the following: (a) What is the total amount spent? What is it per capita? (c) Rank the expenditures in the order of their importance. 1. Committees may report on the following topics from Magruder's American Government: (a) Villages and how they are incorporated-powers, organization, and form of village government (b) City government: Mayor and Council, Commission, and City Manager types (c) City problems and how they are met These reports may well lead to a discussion as to the type which would best fit their own local community. ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 1. Guitteau's Government and Politics in the United States: Chapter IV. CHAPTER XVIII STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT "As the government is, such will be the man." -Plato The state has many problems that are quite different from those of the national government. Just as it is important in the family to have certain questions decided by the one most immediately in touch with them, so it is important that problems of our community life shall be settled by those best informed about them. In most families, for example, the father furnishes the income from which the family expenses are paid. He does not, however, usually decide what food shall be purchased, nor does he actually buy the articles and materials needed in the ordinary household routine. The nature of the state and national governments makes it necessary that there shall be a similar division of authority and responsibility between the two. For example, it is necessary that all the money used in the United States shall be good anywhere. If a man were traveling from New York to Pennsylvania, and had to change all his New York money for Pennsylvania money at the state line, the conduct of business between the citizens of the two states would be greatly hampered. It is necessary also that no action taken by a state shall involve other states or the entire nation in difficulties with foreign governments. On the other hand, it would be just as impractical for the national government to control the roads, schools, asylums, and prisons of the state as it would be for the state to interfere with those duties that can best be performed by the national government. The Duties of the State. The states have the power to do anything (1) not delegated exclusively to the national government by the national Constitution, nor (2) denied thereby to the states, nor (3) denied to the state by the state's own constitution. The state has power over any topic of legislation not taken from it by the national Constitution; that is, the states have all the "residual" powers. Some of those powers the states delegate to their cities and other local governments, but the responsibility belongs with the state. The most important of these powers are: 1. To provide for and supervise the schools. The schools supported by the states, or by the local governments within the states, range all the way from the kindergartens to the great state universities. It is through these institutions that we preserve the open road to equal opportunity. The work of the states in this regard we have discussed in Chapter V. Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. TESTING THE SCALES In order to prevent fraud all weights and measures are checked by an inspector at frequent intervals and any found incorrect are seized and destroyed. 2. To provide for and supervise the institutions necessary for the handicapped and for criminals. What the state does for the handicapped we have discussed in Chapter XI, and the provision for penitentiaries by the states, and for jails by the counties and cities, we have discussed in Chapter VI. |