district can only be determined by the test of practice. Regarding any existing districts the formula to apply The Formula is-For a "visible" office do the people in this district find that their choice is unduly limited by the difficulty which candidates who lack the support of standing political organizations have in getting a hearing?

Or to express the same idea differently-Can a spontaneous movement of public opinion in such district express itself promptly without getting permission from the old political machines?

Or, again, can a candidate of ordinary means and influence get elected in such district with only the help of an impromptu personal organization?

As further evidence, the following instances are offered of the abolition of machine control in districts which conform to the foregoing considerations:

Instances of

Wieldy Districts

CHICAGO COUNCIL: The aldermen are powerful and the aldermanic contests are well illuminated by the Municipal Voters' League, so that the people, despite the long Chicago ballots, take an interest in the office. The wards are small and independent candidates with no machine to help them except such organizations as they can improvise, have frequently been elected. The danger of successful candidacies is a highly effective check on the power of the machines. The Chicago Council is in consequence one of the best in the country and its reform seems to be not spasmodic but permanent.

THE COMMISSION PLAN: As so far tested, the commission plan of city government by a single board of five men elected at large is a success inasmuch as good men are elected and are repeatedly re-elected, without the help of political machines. All the commission-governed cities are of less than 100,000 population, constituting a wieldy district. The plan would fail to eliminate machine control if tried in too large a city. If tried in Buffalo, for example, the attitude of various leagues and political machines would have an important bearing on the contest and it would be impossible to keep the candidates from flirting with permanent organizations continually. No independent could

hope for success. Organized assistance of some sort would be so valuable that it is safe to say that practically every officer who would get elected would owe his election in large part to expert permanently-organized help. It might be a purely personal permanent machine, but if the candidates did not run again that personal machine would be in existence ready to perform a like service for the highest bidder.

To propose that Buffalo adopt a commission plan, with the variation of having the commissioners elected from wards, would cause outcry at first from those who know ward politics in Buffalo at present. The weakness of present ward systems, however, lies primarily in the fact that candidates elected from wards have but trifling powers and their election is not sufficiently important to make it a matter of moment to the people in that ward. The fact that wards generally produce "ward-sized" men is not due to the littleness of the ward, but to the littleness of the job. Give to a ward-elected city council complete control of the city as in English cities, and the position of the councilmen (or aldermen) immediately attracts first-class talent, rises high in importance, and is protected against contamination by correspondingly intense and thorough public scrutiny.

BOROUGH OF RICHMOND: New York City is an unwieldy district (witness the gigantic scale of Hearst's vain operations) and so are also all its boroughs with the exception of the little borough of Richmond with a population of 100,000. It is the only borough where the government has been free from scandal, the only one in which there seems to be little need for reform, the only one in which the Borough President, after a satisfactory term, can compel the politicians to renominate him on the threat that if they fail to do so he can run independently and win. Mr. Cromwell has held the office since 1901, although he is a Republican and the district is Democratic.

In no country except the United States is the unwieldy district to be seen. No officers are elected at large in England or on the Continent or in New Zealand and there are no political machines in

Foreign
Experience

our sense of the phrase.

Logically the application of the principle of the wieldy districts would call for the abolition of the governor's office in the state as well as all other state officers elected at large! In the case of Congressmen it would perhaps necessitate a reduction in the size of the district, against which must be balanced the difficulties of having the House of Representatives a very numerous body. It would call for the abolition of the Presidency or the restoration of the electoral college. I do not seriously propose any of these things and believe that the problems which would remain if districts were made wieldy whenever possible, would have to work out their salvation by some other and unknown route.

Perhaps partial relief may be found in extension of the Oregon idea of having the state pay some of the candidate's expenses by allowing him free advertising space in pamphlets that are supplied free to all voters.

One way of solving the difficulty of getting a candidate elected in a large district without the aid of organized political machines might be found in a scheme of proportional repOther Solutions resentation wherein all officers are elected at large, but each voter records on his ballot only a single first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. A candidate to be successful under this plan would need to get only a quota instead of a plurality, i. e., if there were twenty aldermen to be elected, he would have to get the support of somewhat less than one-twentieth of the voters.

The Unearned Increment in Cities.

By JOHN MARTIN, STAPLETON, STATEN ISLAND. From the returns of the Federal Census so far issued it is plain that the growth of cities, well-markedin previous decades, is continuing and even accelerating. So soon as a State is fairlywell settled cities appear. Before many years the population of the cities is found increasing faster than the population of the rural districts, and, later, the country side is often depleted of its inhabitants to feed the swollen urban districts. Eastern and Northern America is fast becoming urbanized; our political problems each year are more emphatically municipal problems.

For example, in the rich agricultural state of Iowa while farm lands increased in value in the decade 1900 to 1910 by 122 per cent and the population of the seven leading cities increased by about 74,000, the population of the remainder of the state actually decreased by about 81,000.

The urban population of New York State is 6,764,000 and the rural population 2,107,786-less than one-third as many.

We are accustomed to say that the outstanding effects when a city grows big and imposing are that politics are corruptel, councils are wasteful and inefficient, taxes are high, franchises debauch alike eminent citizens and wicked bosses, the saloon and the dive debase the police force, and altogether the democracy, as the boys say, is "up against it".

Increase of
Site Values

But another feature quite as striking as any of these, invariably present when population thickens, and yet seldom considered or fully realized, is an increase of site values, due to community growth and to the habits of industry, order and refinement among the people. Universally in the United States this community-earned increment is distributed among a small part of the population, who, alone, are lot-owners, who, for this increase, specifically, "toil not neither do they spin ", and to whom, therefore, the increment is as John Stuart Mill christened it, " unearned ".

Although in the younger cities the distribution of house and lot ownership is fairly wide and the winners of small prizes in the gamble for increasing site values are therefore fairly numerous, as fast as the city grows the values at the centre, which are scooped by a tiny fraction of the population, increase faster than the values in the outlying residential areas. As land values soar, single houses give way to tenements, lowly stores and offices to sky-scrapers and the proportion of owners in the population diminishes, until the condition is reached such as in New York, where all the land is owned by about 20,000 out of the four million inhabitants, and in Galveston, where most of the valuable real estate is said to be in the hands of or controlled by a score of individuals.

Portland Ore., and Boston

Examples of the dazzling increases of lot values at the centre of cities might be taken from North, South, East or West. One from Portland, Ore., will illustrate. The rental for the Pittock Block in that city, bought outright fifty years ago for the insignificant sum of $300, was leased recently for ninety-nine years at a rental which begins at $30,000 and will increase every five years, until, during the last semi-decade of the period, it will amount to about $104,000 a year. The total rental for the period will amount to $6,298,426; and, when the lease runs out, the property will be worth $16,000,000-quite a staggering return on an investment of $300. Compared with that the example, lately brought to attention by Mayor Fitzgerald, is not impressive, though, in itself, it is startling enough. A parcel of land in Boston which cost $238,000 twenty years ago is now worth $695,100, an increase of nearly 200 per cent. "This fortunate investor," continues the Mayor, whose purple passages one may quote as having official sanction, "this fortunate investor owed every dollar of this added value to the public. No intellectual or moral quality was displayed by him in acquiring it and no form of service was rendered. His only talent was to purchase and to keep. Meanwhile, the growth of population, the ever-swelling tides of travel and of trade, the expenditures of the public money on pavements, sidewalks, lights and fire and police protection, the building of a great court house, in a word, all the multifold activities of the community at large enhanced the value of the estate."