which are to be furPursuant to the re

unless made upon one of the blank forms nished town treasurers for the purpose. quirements of the act, therefore, a book of engraved blank notes will be furnished by the Bureau of Statistics to the treasurers of each of the 321 towns in the Commonwealth, each note being serially numbered and attached to a stub, on which the treasurer will be required to enter certain information to be kept as a permanent record of the transaction-such as the date of the town meeting authorizing the loan, the purpose of the loan (whether in anticipation of taxes or for some other object), the total amount of the loan authorized, the amount of previous issues of the loan, the amount of the note, the date of issue, the balance of the loan unissued, the person to whom the note is payable, the place of payment, the date the note is due, the rate of interest, and a statement as to how the interest is made payable (i. e., whether annually, semi-annually, or discounted). A blank form will also be furnished on which the town clerk must certify the exact text of the vote of the town meeting authorizing the loan; also that of the persons who sign the note as treasurer and selectmen are, in fact, the treasurer and selectmen duly qualified to act as such.

When the treasurer wishes to issue a note, he will use one of the blank forms furnished by the Bureau of Statistics, which, after being carefully filled out, he must transmit, together with the town clerk's certification as provided for, to the Bureau. The receipt of the note by the Bureau will then be acknowledged by letter to the town treasurer, the town clerk, and each of the selectmen whose names appear on the notes as the signers thereof, and they will be requested to return certificates identifying their signatures to the note. If the Director of the Bureau of Statistics, upon examination, finds that the note appears to have been duly issued in accordance with the vote of the town and to have been signed by the duly qualified officials thereof, he will so certify on the face of the note. The note will then be returned by registered mail to the treasurer of the town. In accordance with the law, there will be charged for the certification of each note a fee which, it is intended, shall be sufficient to cover the cost of furnishing the forms and incidental ex

penses of certification. All official papers pertaining to the issue will be open to inspection to any interested person at the office of the Bureau of Statistics in the State House. One incidental provision of the act, important in connection with the Bureau's statistical work, is the obligation imposed upon town treasurers to notify the Director of the Bureau immediately whenever any note issued shall have become due and paid and to state the source from which the money to pay the same was obtained. A town treasurer violating any of the provisions of the act is made liable to a fine of from $100 to $500.

The functions of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics are, as its name implies, primarily statistical, and we do not propose to lose sight of this fact. We have found, indeed, that it is impossible to compile reliable data relating to municipal finances without thorough reform in accounting and budget-making methods; but while bearing in mind that accounting and budgetary reform are essential to and lie at the very foundation of any plan of trustworthy municipal statistics, we should not fail to remember that the public as a whole cannot be expected to concern itself greatly with bookkeeping technique. Even excellent accountants are too often unable to see beyond their books and have not the imaginative faculty needed to enable them to select the essential facts for presentation to the public, which wants to know-or ought to want to know-what the sources of municipal revenue are and how and for what purposes its money is being spent; and this information it cannot get from reports, however accurate, which are little more than mere transcripts of cash accounts accompanied by no effort to arrange and group the figures in such manner as to give them real significance. City and town officials should, therefore, not only know how to keep books and records accurately and systematically, but they ought, also, in order to round out their capacity for usefulness to the people, to possess the qualifications of being good reporters.

However charitable a view we may wish to take in explana

1 This fee has been fixed at a flat rate of $3 for each note certified without regard to the amount of the note.

tion of conditions which may reflect merely the result of generations of indifference, it is plainly apparent, by all the signs of the times, that the people do not propose to be governed much longer by the spirit of laissez faire in their municipal affairs. Not better accounting methods alone, therefore, but the galvanizing of the bookkeeper's figures into living object lessons that will make for a better and broader civic life-this is the real purpose of the statistics of municipal finances we are collecting and compiling in Massachusetts.

A Comparison of the Forms of Commis

sion Government in Cities.

By ERNEST S. BRADFORD, WASHINGTON, D. C. The number of cities governed under the commission form has greatly increased during 1910. Any form of administration which has been adopted or approved by a hundred municipalities merits the respectful consideration of every student of city government, and particularly the members of the National Municipal League. In November, 1909, fifty cities were reported as operating or ready to operate under the system which has received the name of the "commission" form; to-day between ninety and one hundred cities have it in force or have voted to adopt it, and as many more have the matter under consideration. If a new name continues to be added to the list each week it may not be long before a majority of our American municipalities will be gov erned by a small board, elected at large and exercising adequate power under certain restraining "checks", while New York, Chicago, Boston, and other centers of population will be actively discussing proper methods of applying the system to metropolitan conditions.

During 1910, cities have secured commission charters or states have passed general acts permitting municipalities to adopt the board form as follows:

Kentucky, Illinois, South Carolina, and Louisiana passed acts under which the cities of Newport (Ky.), Columbia (S. C.), and Shreveport (La.), have already voted to operate.

Commission

Governed Cities

In Kansas, the cities of Topeka, Coffeyville, Parsons, Pittsburg, Marion, Cherryvale, Iola, Wellington, Emporia, Abilene, Newton, Girard, Neodesha and Caldwell, installed the plan or decided to do so.

Eight additional cities in Texas took advantage of a state law permitting any municipality of less than 10,000 to adopt it by a

majority vote of the electors-Kennedy, Aransas Pass, Harlingen, Barry, Lyford, Port Lavaca, Marble Falls, and Terrell.

In Iowa, Keokuk and Burlington began operating and Sioux City, Marshalltown and Fort Dodge voted to also follow the example of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

In Oklahoma, McAlester, Muskogee, El Reno, Bartlesville, Sapulpa, Miami and Duncan are now included.

Vermillion (S. D.), Mankato (Minn.), Eau Claire (Wis.), Tacoma (Wash.), Lynn (Mass.), Modesto and San Luis Obispo (Calif.), and High Point (N. C.), are recent acquisitions. Hattiesburg, Miss., began operating during the present year, although it voted in 1909. In Oakland (Calif.), the board of freeholders have already reported a commission charter, which will be voted on shortly, and if accepted by the city, will go to the state legislature for its approval early in 1911.1

From this enumeration have been omitted several cities in Tennessee, one in Missouri, one in California, three in Texas, one in North Carolina, and one in Massachusetts, which, although found in some published lists, cannot properly be classed as commission cities. (The full list of cities which up to November 15, 1910 had installed or voted to install the commission form is found on the last three pages.)

In those cities where the plan has been in operation for several years, its inauguration has been followed so uniformly by more or less marked improvements in the various fields of municipal activity as to impress even its opponents. Legislative committees opposed to the plan in advance, keen newspaper men, doubting anything which purports to really change the usual bad municipal conditions, earnest but skeptical lawyers and students of government, and hard-headed business men, have all visited Galveston and Houston and Dallas, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Leavenworth and other commission cities, only to be convinced against their will of the improvement wrought and to go home to advocate the adoption of the system in their own towns. It would be interesting to enumerate in detail the results in each city, but such is not the purpose of this paper. It is suffi

1 Adopted by City of Oakland in December, 1910.

2 For dates of beginning operation in each city, see pp. 278-280.