So far as townshipgovernment is concerned, cities often remain subject to it until they be come large enough to absorb all of one or more townships, when the functions of the several town governments included within the city limits are usually taken over by the city and the separate township organizations abolished. The infinite confusion and difficulty that re sults from the persistence of a multitude of different local governmental bodies occupying in whole or in part the same territory is per haps best illustrated by the experience of Chi cago, where until comparatively recent years even the assessments of property forming the basis for municipal taxation were made by independent assessors elected by the dif ferent towns surviving within the city limits, with the result that all the assessors com peted against each other to keep down the assessments of their particular towns. The re sult was that Chicago struggled along for many years trying to operate its municipal govern ment under a constitutional limitation of its debt based upon a low percentage of its as sessed valuation, although that valuation was in fact only 8 or 10 per cent of full value. The experience of cities points to the conclu sion that in the interest of efficiency and economical government all local functions and all administrative functions performed by locally elected officials within the limits of the city should be consolidated with the city gov ernment.
4. Relation of Cities to Each Other.— Theoretically all cities, even those of the same State, are independent political units, having no formal relations with each other, and responsi ble either to their own people or to the people of the State as represented in the central gov ernment. However, with the enormous increase in urban population, particularly in the Eastern States, cities have in many cases begun to crowd each other. Sometimes two or more communities which started out as independent urban units have actually grown together far as their industrial and social life is con cerned without as yet being consolidated polit ically. In other cases, the extra-territorial needs of a great urban community for water supply, drainage, transportation and harbor facilities or electric power have brought cities into contact with the interests of other cities whose locations may be quite remote. For example, around the city of Boston has grown up a group of cities which, while politically in dependent of each other and of the metropolis, are all actually inter-dependent, so far as water supply, drainage and park development is con cerned. The result in this case has been the establishment by State authority of metropoli tan districts under the control of State com missions whose duties are to co-ordinate and promote the interests of all the constituent cities in the matters subject to their jurisdic-, tion. This form of co-operation is in effect partial consolidation through State initiative. As another illustration we may take the city of Newark, N. J., which is closely surrounded by a group of overflow cities, all combined to gether so far as public utilities are concerned, by one semi-private agency, the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, which operates the street railways, the gas plants and the electric light and power works in all of them. In this case the control over these utilities which the individual cities have necessarily in large measure lost is exercised not through a metro politan district nor through a federation of the cities concerned, but through a State board of public utilities having jurisdiction throughout the limits of New Jersey. In Ohio a few years ago a group of cities centring around Akron and Canton, all served by the transit system of the Northern Ohio Traction and Light Com pany entered into what was the °Inter City Traction League for the purpose of as sembling their complaints against the traction company, co-ordinating their remedies and uniting to present their demands to the public service commission of Ohio. In California a few years ago an act was passed by the legis lature enabling cities to federate and establish districts coterminous with the areas served by particularly utilities for the purpose of acquir ing and operating such utilities. Cities through out the country have found it to their interest to combine informally in organizations for the study of municipal problems and the inter change of experience. Notable among these are the League of American Municipalities and The Utilities Bureau. In many States also leagues of municipalities have been formed which often have their nucleus in the municipal reference departments of the State universities and thus give to their constituent members the benefit of the research and constructive sug gestions of modern applied scholarship.
5. Influence of Increase of Population upon the Development of Municipal Prob While cities remain small and are sur rounded by wide stretches of agricultural ter ritory, it is only the simplest communal needs, such as water supply, drainage and police and fire protection, that go to make up the neces sary functions of city government as dis tinguished from rural local government. As cities grow larger, however, and as more cities spring up primarily dependent upon the same outside areas for water and food supplies, the original city problems became more complex and their solution more difficult. Furthermore, cities as they grow not only spread over larger areas but become more congested at their centres. Wherever cities become so large or so crowded that the open spaces of the country are no longer readily accessible to children and that even play-spaces under the crowded con ditions of urban life are at a premium, the nature of the problems of the city government undergoes a radical change. Size and conges tion transform the environment of the home and thereby make necessary a whole series of municipal functions, centring in the problems of health, recreation and education. It is with relation to these problems that cities have been prone to neglect their duty and to post pone the expenditure of thought and money necessary if the inherent and fundamental dis advantage surrounding human life in large and congested cities is to be in any reasonable meas ure overcome. The trouble is increased by the fact that as cities grow bigger the value of land mounts high and only the few who are relatively rich can afford to own their own homes unless, indeed, their less well-to-do fellow citizens seek remote suburbs. In any case the vast majority of the down town popu lation will be made up of renters. Also, as the city gets larger, the community life changes. It is no longer possible for every citizen to be acquainted with the majority of his fellow citizens. Instead, he maintains his acquaintance with the comparatively few who are associated with him in his work or in his social or re ligious activities, and such associations become less and less neighborhood affairs. The result is that the citizen gradually becomes more and more dependent upon the newspapers and upon the official party organizations for the knowl edge and leadership by which his civic activities must be guided. Moreover, the increase in the size of a city and the enormous changes in the value of the land upon which it is built and in the size and profitableness of its industries tend to separate the population more and more into classes. The rich become very rich and for the most part live in the most beautiful and exclusive districts of the city, while the poor become very poor and live crowded to gether in the slums. There are abnormal con trasts between splendor and squalor and the public opinion of the community becomes more inert and less intelligent; it becomes less re sponsible to the ordinary demands of citizen ship and reacts with greater passion and reck lessness upon the extraordinary ones. Urban life creates enormous commercial, industrial and social values. Those who first flock to a city, eager for these economic and social ad vantages, overlook to a large extent the counter vailing disadvantages inherent in social con gestion and for a long time, through ignor ance, carelessness or greed, refuse to pay the necessary costs of overcoming these disad vantages. As a result the problems of the city are cumulative, so that after it has reached a certain size and finds that it must try to re move these neglected disadvantages at whatever cost, it begins to feel the pinch of civic poverty and is never able fully to catch up with its work. The unpaid judgments of civilization that have been piling up against it can no longer be escaped, and this fact combines with many others to make municipal functions in large cities extremely complex and extremely expensive. The law diminishing returns as ap plied to agriculture may be considered to apply also to the activities of municipal government Beyond a certain point, which is determined primarily by the size of the city, the community gets a diminishing return for every dollar spent, but since the necessity is increasing the number of dollars to be spent increases by a geometrical progression.