"The Board of Supervisors may submit to the people of the county, at any regular election or any special one called for that purpose, the question whether money may be borrowed to aid in the erection of any public buildings, whether any species of stock not prohibited by law shall be permitted to run at large and at what time it shall be prohibited, and the question of any other local or police regulation not inconsistent with the laws of the State; and when the warrants of a county are at a depreciated value, they may in like manner submit the question whether a tax of higher rate than that provided by law shall be levied.”

The method of submitting such propositions is fixed as follows: "The whole question including the sum desired to be raised, or the amount of tax desired to be levied, or the rate per annum and the whole regulation, including the time of its taking effect or having operation, if it be of a nature to be set forth, and the penalty for its violation, if there be one, shall be published at least four weeks in some newspaper printed in the county. If there be no such newspaper the publication shall be by being posted up in at least one of the most public places in each township in the county, and in addition in at least five among the most public places in the county, one of them being the door of the court-house, for at least thirty days prior to the time of taking the vote. All such notices shall name the time when such question shall be voted upon and the form in which the question shall be taken and a copy of the question submitted shall be posted up at each place of voting during the day of election.

The Board of Supervisors, on being satisfied that the above requirements have been substantially complied with, and that a majority of the votes cast are in favor of the proposition submitted, shall cause the proposition and the result of the vote to be entered at large in the minute-book, and a notice of its adoption to be published for the same time and in the same manner as above provided for publishing the preliminary notice, and from the time of

entering the result of the vote in relation to borrowing or expending money, and from the completion of the notice of its adoption in the case of a local or police regulation, the vote and entry thereof on the county records shall be in full force and effect."

It is stated further that "the Board shall submit the question of the adoption or rescission of such a measure when petitioned therefor by one-fourth of the voters of the county unless a different number be prescribed by law in any special case."

It is to be noted here that the initiation rests with either the people or the representative body of the county, the Board of Supervisors; one-fourth of the voters being qualified to demand the Referendum on almost any ordinance or regulation. This is a general Referendum in the identical form in which it appears to-day in the cantonal and Federal governments of Switzerland.

CHAPTER IV.*

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR CITY CHARTERS.

In the preceding chapter brief attention was directed to the Referendum as applied to city charters. In three States of the West, Missouri, California and Washington, the people have come to have a direct voice in the adoption of these instruments, and, as this marks the first appearance of a movement to invest our American cities with the rights of self-government, the origin and development of this particular form of the Referendum in this country may be made the topic for a separate chapter.

The cities were in the original scheme of our government, and are still, with the exceptions to be spoken of in this chapter, the creations of the States. They are granted charters by the Legislatures of the States, which in many cases have unlimited powers, both in making the grant and in withdrawing it again, or enacting amendments. It was the uniform plan earlier, and it still prevails in several States, notably and probably with the most evil consequences in New York, to confer city charters by special laws. Such a charter, though imposing obligations on the people who are to live under it, imposes none on the Legislature which grants it. It is liable to change at the pleasure of the granting power and the interferences in many cases are frequent and utterly contrary to the needs or wishes of the city. In every State which grants charters by special act the proceedings of each legislative session are burdened with bills affecting city affairs, these bills not infrequently being schemes to enrich cliques

*This chapter is largely taken from a paper which the author submitted to the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and which was published in the "Annals" of that body for May, 1893, entitled "Home Rule for our American Cities."

or individuals by obliging the city to buy private property, to create additional lucrative offices or to grant valuable franchises or business privileges. This may have been a suitable enough a plan, and satisfactory in its results, in earlier times when the cities were little more than village communities and could be treated as the counties and other local divisions of the State. But when a city comes to be a great metropolis, containing perhaps a population as large or half as large as all the rest of the State, and much larger than that of many. of the less populous States, containing wealth and taxable property greater in value than all the agricultural counties combined, with widely diverging interests and requirements, the absurdity of such a system must appear plain to every

one.

There has been, latterly, a very clearly-defined tendency to place restrictions on the Legislatures in this matter of granting and amending city charters. The constitutional conventions have taken the subject in hand and nearly all the State constitutions which have been framed since the war prohibit charter granting by special law; and provide further that these laws shall be general, specifying sometimes, as in Missouri, Kentucky and Wyoming, the number of classes into which the cities of the State shall be divided and making other specifications, as in California, that the city legislatures within the State shall be bi-cameral.* Although this is an

*The constitutions of the following States require charters to be granted by general law :

Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, California, New Jersey, Indiana, Iowa, West Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi and Washington.

In Texas cities with a population below 10,000 must be organized under general laws. In Louisiana special legislation affecting cities is forbidden, exception being made for New Orleans.

The granting of charters by special law is still permitted by the constitutions of the following States :

New York, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado and Alabama.

undoubted move for the better, the improvement is not so marked in reality as it might appear. These general acts divide the cities of the State into several classes. Some of them by the very terms of their enactment abolish all special charters previously granted and make incorporation by the new system obligatory. In other cases incorporation under the new law is optional, dependent upon the vote of the people. Unless it is so specified in the constitution there is no limit to the number of classes into which a Legislature may divide the cities of the State. It may construct a classification so as to include but a single city in a class, and it has been decided by the courts that such legislation is not necessarily special and therefore not unconstitutional.

Along with the other restrictions which it has been found expedient to place upon the State Legislatures in the matter of city charters, has appeared the very important movement to entirely deprive these bodies of the powers which they previously exercised, and to place them in the custody of the people themselves; and this is what has been done in Missouri in cities containing a population of more than 100,000; in California, in cities with a population of more than 3,500, and in Washington, in cities with a population of more than 20,000. The city which was to originate this interesting reform in our American municipal system was St. Louis. When the convention to frame a new constitution for Missouri met at Jefferson City, May 5, 1875, the government of St. Louis was notoriously bad. It had been so for a long time. The State Legislature had become very meddlesome and there was a general feeling in favor of some radical change. The St. Louis delegation went into the convention determined to secure from the country members some satisfactory concessions on this subject. About a week after the convention met, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, of St. Louis, introduced a resolution that municipalities, having a population of 100,000 and over, should be regulated by a "fundamental constitutional charter," which should not be subject to yearly