2 78 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
extremes are 11,000 and 106,000; in Philadelphia, about 7,000 and 65,000. In Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio additional members are elected from the city at large. Where there is a bicameral council the smaller body is frequently elected by the whole city instead of by wards.
Minority representation. Under a general ticket system of voting one party is almost certain to elect all of the members chosen at one election, and a large minority of voters or even a majority, if the election is decided by a plurality may have no representation in the council. To obviate such a result, various schemes of voting have been devised ; and several of them have been put into operation, but only in a few places, and usually to be abandoned after a few years.
Compensation. Most American cities pay their council member a salary. This is true of nearly all the large cities ; in New York $2,000 a year is paid, in Chicago $1,500. Philadelphia is the only city of the first rank which pays no salary. In the smaller cities the amount is usually between $200 and $400, or from $2 to $5 per meeting.
Social standing of councilors. Few attempts have been made to study this point in detail, but in Boston it has been noted that since 1822 there has been a steady decline in the amount of the property interests of members of the city council.
Control over administration. In general, municipal councils in most states have very limited powers in the creation of administrative offices. Their charters usually provide rather definitely for the city officers, and others may be appointed only to perform duties derived naturally and reasonably from the provisions of the charter. -The control, however, which investigation of departments by council committees gives, is further strengthened by the power which the council possesses in the matter of appropriations.
Ordinance power. It has been fixed by judicial decision that city ordinances must be reasonable and fair, and consistent with the laws and public policy of the state. JOHN A. FAIRLIE, in Political Science Quarterly, June, 1904.
E. B. W.
Factory Education : A Statement of the Case. The American com- munity has not yet discovered a practicable means of equipping sons of workingmen for broad, serviceable lives as workingmen. Even in the case of the seeming exception of the agricultural college, the training given is directed rather toward the improvement of the technique and the resources of agriculture in America, than toward the enrichment of the lives of American farmers.
In our elementary schools, education is carried on from tTie cultural point of view. It does not seek to cultivate particular aptitudes in the child, but to supply a certain minimum of knowledge and training with which the child may be able to enter the competitive life of a modern society. On attaining the statutory age the child is theoretically prepared to earn his living, and in the majority of cases the struggle for a livelihood must commence at this point. With the limited infor- mation derived from attendance on a grammar or parochial school, the boy finds himself submerged in the detail of a manufacturing plant. The work he does is simply work, non-developing at best, and at worst stultifying. His position does not give him the opportunity to cultivate special skill, and with it a stronger economic position and the chance for mental growth.
The limit of society's concern seems to be reached when the boy has been fur- nished with the traditionally necessary equipment on the one hand, and the sup- posed antitoxin to bad citizenship on the other. But the problem arises : Can society afford to look on the probable waste of capacity, that results from the year-long performance of meaningless and repetitious tasks, thus indifferently? There is involved not only the waste of productive energy, which is a matter of industrial and commercial expediency, but there is also involved the restriction of moral development.
In the long run the performance of the work of machine-tending by automatic machines, and the increase of leisure among the working class, and its use for purposes of self-education, may be expected to aid in the solution of the problem. But for the present and the matter is an immediate and pressing one help must
