Public Reform and Municipal Government. rected against existing evils and abuses, rather than in favor of the formation of new schemes to wipe them out. A genuine re form stands committed to the cardinal idea of making public affairs cleaner and purer, as they are found at the time of making the ef fort, and incidentally of providing better ways and means of obtaining and retaining the same. Public reform, then, may be said to be but another name for cleaner and better social and economical conditions in govern mental affairs. Organized effort is one of the most effec tive means of accomplishing practical reform. This is preeminently true of municipal re form. To be of any real value, however, it must be more than a negative force. It must be positive and aggressive in its methods, and in its demands. Emphasizing the existence of an abuse in the municipal service is not enough. An unequivocal demand for its eradication must also follow. Organized municipal reform which appeals to a class, or to several classes, and which adopts as a cardinal principle and moving force the lessening of the burden of taxation in the city, will hardly meet with much suc cess. The basis of such a reform movement is essentially selfish and narrow. It is im pelled by wrong motives. It appeals, mainly, to those who bear the burdens of taxa tion, generally the wealthier class. Public economy with this class is synonymous to reduced taxation. As a purely business proposition this may sound well enough. But does a genuine reform movement con template an appeal to the pockets of its friends as a sole, or chief, mainspring for its life and action? Is it at all certain that a better, cleaner, or cheaper, municipal govern ment is to be secured because it may cost less for the time being? And does not an appeal for reform, based on such a low moral plane, tend to discount, if not degrade, all
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sincere efforts for better municipal govern ment? Public reform, in order that it may be even tolerably successful, must be a popular movement and awaken general interest. To do this it must take up matters which vitally concern all the people, or practically all the people. The organized effort must leave an indelible impress on the public pulse. It must enlist the active support of the com mon people, of those who are considered as occupying stations in the commoner walks of life. Their motives are less apt to be influ enced by hopes of immediate gains or losses, are purer and higher, if you please, than are those of the active, busy man of large finan cial interests. It is the common people who are, after all, the conservators of the rights of all the people. A reform movement which ignores, or undervalues, this vital democratic principle will be apt to sound the tocsin of reform to little purpose, yet, perhaps, " keep ing the word of promise to our ear, and break ing it to our hope." It has been said that organized reform must watch at long range, from the clouds, so to speak, any attempt at evil-doing on the part of the servants of the municipality. The clearer vision of the eagle eye of the vultures, who are supposed to be the conser vators of purity in official life, can, it is argued, at the greater distance, scent any misfeasance or malfeasance, with greater precision and prevision, and also avoid contamination of the pure white garments of the watchers with the slime and the filth and the rot present in the city's official sea. This policy, it is urged, would induce all the wealth, and all the culture, and the best (?) theoretical reformers to assist in the work so auspi ciously (?) begun. But such a course is re pugnant to the very idea of reform. It is unAmerican. True reform knows no class, no sect, no party. It is a cosmopolitan. The
