The advantages claimed for the city manager plan are: (1) It creates a single-headed ad ministrative establishment instead of several separate administrative establishments; (2) it permits expertness in administration at the head, where it is most needed; (3) it permits comparative permanence in office of the chief executive, v'hereas the terms of elective execu tives are rarely long, this permanence tending to eliminate amateur and transient executives and enabling the consummation of far-sighted policies extending over many years; (4) it per mits the city manager to migrate from city to city, and thus as he need not be a resident of the city at the time of his appointment, au ex perienced man may be summoned at increased salary from a similar post in another city; (5) while giving a single-headed administration, it abolishes the one-man power of the old mayor and-council plan, and, as the manager is subject to instant correction or even discharge by the commission, the city need not suffer from his personal whims or prejudices, whereas, on the other hand, the combined judgment of the whole commission safely submerges and averages the individual whims or prejudices of the various members of the commission, etc.
In 1908 the city of Staunton, Va., initiated the city manager plan in the United States by adopting an ordinance providing for a "general manager° who should assume all executive duties save those reserved to the finance, ordi nance, school and auditing committees and be responsible to the elected governing body of the city; the mayor and council were retained be cause under the Virginia constitution the city could not change its government to the com mission form. Hence the innovation created no widespread interest, but in 1912 the city of Sumter, S. C., directed attention to the plan by adopting a commission form of government and advertising widely throughout the country for applicants for the position of city manager. In 1911 the Board of Trade of Lockport, N. Y., secured the introduction in the New York legis lature of a bill authorizing commission gov ernment with a city manager for cities of the third class in that State, but the bill failed to pass. Nevertheless the interest manifested in the city manager plan has resulted in its adop tion in many cities in the United States and also the passage of general State-wide laws by Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Ohio and Iowa, permitting all or certain classes of cities to adopt the plan. A list follows of the
number of cities operating wholly or in part under the city manager plan, and of some of the more important of these cities with the year in which the plan became effective.
Bibliography.—
' XXIX pp. 215-17, San Francisco 1915) ; Man Xxix pp. 215-17, San Francisco 1915) ; Man- del, A. M., 'Budgetary Procedure under the Manager Form of City Government' (in 'An nals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,' Vol. LXII, pp. 163-75, Philadelphia 1915) ; National Municipal League, "The Commission Plan and Commission Manager Plan of Municipal Government' (Philadelphia 1914); National Short Ballot Organization, 'Commission Government with a City Manager' (New York 1915) ; Patton, J. S., 'Municipal Business Manager' (in National Municipal Review, Vol. IV, pp. 50-54, Concord, N. H., 1915) ; Ryan, Oswald, 'Municipal Free dom: a Study of the Commission Government' (Garden City, N. Y., 1915, contains bibliog raphy) ; Toulmin, H. A., 'The City Manager' (New York 1915, contains bibliography) ; 'Up son, L. D., 'City Manager Plan in Ohio' (in American Political Science Review, Vol. IX, pp. 496-503, Baltimore 1915) ; Waite, H. M., 'The Commission Manager Plan' (in Na tional Municipal Review, Vol. IV, pp. 40-49, Concord, N. H., 1915); and