sistent with the general laws of the state. In this way is created an unmolested sphere of local self-government in which the city may exercise all powers necessary to its own complete development, without the necessity of recourse to any outside authority and without the danger of interference from any outside authority. Municipal home rule means further that the city may determine its own form of government, or as Herbert Bigelow put it, "may cut out its own municipal suit of clothes." Thus the city decides for itself, by means of a charter convention and ratification election, whether it will have the commission plan, the city manager plan, the mayor-and-council system or any other form of municipal organization.
And why not? Who know better than the citizens of Indianapolis the needs of Indianapolis and the administrative agencies that are adapted to those needs? Who can determine better than the citizens of Lexington, Kentucky, the activities of public welfare in which the government of Lexington should engage? If Terre Haute, Indiana, wants a non-partisan form of city government why should not Terre Haute have that form? There appears to be no reason for excepting cities from the operation of the principle of self-government that does not apply with equal force against the principle of democracy itself.
Ours are the only English-speaking cities in the world that are denied the right of self-government. One can not imagine, for example, legislative intermeddling in the affairs of an English city, which is permitted by Parliament to develop in its own way and according to its own ideas of administrative organization. English cities since 1832 have been among the best governed in the world and American cities have been among the worst governed. What accounts for this difference between the municipal experience of two English-speaking peoples? The main reason is that English cities are self-governed and American cities are state-governed. The citizens of Birmingham govern Birmingham; the legislature of Indiana governs Indianapolis.
Home rule for cities means municipal self-government, but it does not mean municipal independence in the sense that there are created independent sovereignties within the state. It does not mean that the state government loses its control over matters that concern the general state welfare. Thus home rule does not require that the state surrender entirely its control over elections in which state officers are chosen, for the people of the commonwealth as a whole are vitally interested in maintaining the purity of the ballot and in the prevention of corrupt and fradulent practices. It does not mean that the state resigns its power to pass laws relative to the health, safety and general welfare of its citizens. The state at large is vitally interested in the prevention of crime and disease and in the education of the people, and, although it may leave the city free to provide its own administrative machinery
