USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Municipal government history and politics, Vol. V > Part 6
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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
This department continues as now established by law.
DEPARTMENT OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION.
This department is under the charge of a President and four directors, to whom shall be confided the care and man- agement of the charities, almshouses, hospitals, houses of cor- rection, and all other similar institutions, the control of which is entrusted to the city.
SINKING FUND COMMISSION
Shall continue as now established by law.
APPOINTMENTS OF OFFICERS, CLERKS, &C.
1. The Mayor nominates, and by and with the advice and consent of Select Councils appoints, for the term to which he has been elected, the Directors of the Departments of Public Safety and of Public Works, and the President and Directors of the Department of Charities and Correction.
2. The directors or chief officers of the departments shall appoint all subordinate officers, &c. The heads of depart- ments, by written order, giving their reasons therefor, may remove or suspend subordinates, provided the same is not done for political reasons. Hereafter all appointments and promotions are to be made in accordance with rules providing for competitive examination of applicants.
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The City Government of Philadelphia.
IMPEACHMENT.
Municipal officers shall be liable to impeachment, suspen - sion, and removal from office for any corrupt act, or practice, mental incapacity or incompetency.
Complaint in writing may be made to the Court of Com- mon Pleas by twenty freeholders, supported by affidavits. If reasonable ground is shown, the Court to grant a rule for the accused to appear on a certain day and answer. On reasonable cause shown, a committee of five reputable citizens are to investigate. These shall be sworn and have full power to examine books, papers, and witnesses. Written report is to be made and filed with the testimony within three weeks. Supervision pending the investigation may be ordered by the Court. If the charge is sustained, Select Councils shall assem- ble within ten days and sit as a Court of impeachment. Accused may be heard by counsel. Prosecution to be conducted by the City Solicitor. President or associate Judge shall preside at the trial. Decision of Court is to be entered of record. If found guilty, judgment is to be entered and office declared vacant.
CONTRACTS.
Contracts shall be in writing and made in the name of the city, and countersigned by the Controller, filed in the Mayor's office and attested copies furnished the Controller and the department charged with the work.
GENERAL PROVISIONS.
The first election under this act shall be held on the third Tuesday in February, 1887. Prior to January 1, 1887, councils enact ordinances providing for the reorganization of the city departments so as to conform to this act. All executive powers and duties not distributed by this act shall by ordinance be assigned to the proper department. Councils are
71
The Bullitt Bill.
granted full powers to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of books and papers. There are certain other provisions for necessary and obvious requirements of adminis- tration.
CONCLUSION.
Such, very briefly told, is the outline of the development of the city government of Philadelphia. Many most important and interesting factors have been but scantily touched or passed by entirely, as our allotted space only admitted of an effort to give the leading thought and characteristic of each period. We have seen the city grow from a collection of caves, whose inhabitants were counted by scores, to a crowded mart, the home of a million people ; from two square miles of territory to one hundred and twenty-nine; from the govern- ment of the County Court and Grand Jury, closely followed by a medieval charter, to the advent of the latest and best thought on municipal government, as expressed in the Bullitt Bill. We have passed through periods of badly conceived and worse executed systems of government, and if the people of to-day can learn anything by the lessons of the past they ought to have arrived at the fixed conclusion that the manage- ment of the municipal affairs of a great city is a large business, and one that they cannot afford to have trifled with if they have any regard for their own interests and the fair fame of the city. It is time to have learned that being sound on the tariff is not the only qualification needed for a chief magistrate, and it ought to be well known by this time that there is no such thing as posterity in the life of a city when calculating on the day of reckoning for drafts on the future.
It is not to be expected, nor is it claimed, that the new charter presents a perfect system ; but it has been founded on experience, and is in a line with the most approved develop- ment of thought in this country. It presents the Democratic idea of all power delegated by the people to its agents, and adopts the State and Federal system of a decently-endowed and responsible executive.
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The City Government of Philadelphia.
Much of its immediate success will depend on the wisdom exercised by councils in framing the operating ordinance, and the character and good faith of the men who are first called upon to administer those provisions. It is believed, however, that neither individuals nor the machine can wholly prevent its good aim nor break down the barriers which are raised up against the corruption and incompetence of the past-that, with the act of 1885, a point has been made in the interest of good government not alone for Philadelphia but for all the great cities of America, and that, when the history of the next century is written, the historian will date the birth of scien- tific government in Philadelphia from the passage of the Bullitt Bill.
III
THE CITY GOVERNMENT
OF
BOSTON
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor
History is past Politics and Politics present History .- Freeman
FIFTH SERIES
III
THE CITY GOVERNMENT
OF
BOSTON
BY JAMES M. BUGBEE
BALTIMORE N. MURRAY, PUBLICATION AGENT, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY March, 1887
COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY N. MURRAY.
ISAAC FRIEDENWALD, PRINTER, BALTIMORE.
THE CITY GOVERNMENT OF BOSTON.
I.
THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.
The controlling influence in the spiritual and political councils of the founders of Boston, in New England, appears to have been held by those members of the Massachusetts Bay Company who came from the eastern counties of which Boston, in Old England, was the chief city, and who were commonly called, at the time, "the Boston men." The members of the company who came from the western counties of Dorset and Devon, and who were known as "the Dor- chester men," represented the commercial element in the adventure.1 But there was no conflict of opinion between these two parties to the enterprise concerning the system of government which was to be set up here. Neither the Bos- ton men nor the Dorchester men had worked out the details of the scheme outlined in the charter of Charles I. Gover- nor Winthrop, in general terms, stated the purpose to be " Cohabitation, and consortship, under a due form of govern- ment, both civil and ecclesiastical." The "due form " was to be shaped by circumstances.
It was not until 1641, nearly eleven years after the transfer of the government to New England, that written laws were adopted for the administration of justice; and in the mean- time there had been no express recognition of the common law of England. "The deputies," said Winthrop, in 1635,
1 S. F. Haven in Memorial History of Boston, I. 88-89.
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The City Government of Boston. [78
" having conceived great danger to our state in regard that our magistrates, for want of positive laws in many cases, might proceed according to their discretion, it was agreed that some men should be appointed to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a Magna Charta, which, being allowed by some of the ministers and the general court, should be received for fundamental laws." 1
In 1636 John Cotton, having been requested to assist the magistrates in compiling a body of laws, presented a copy of " Moses, his Judicials," taken almost literally from the books of Moses. It was never adopted, but it was printed in Lon- don, in 1641, as " an abstract of the laws of New England as they are now established." In 1641, the Body of Liberties, composed by Rev. Nathaniel Ward, "formerly a student and practiser in the course of the common law," was established for a period of three years, "by that experience to have them fully amended and established to be perpetual."2
In the laws thus tentatively put into operation, it is pro- vided that " The freemen of every township shall have power to make such by-laws and constitutions as may concern the welfare of their town, provided they be not of a criminal, but only of a prudential nature, and that their penalties exceed not 20s. for one offense, and that they be not repugnant to the public laws and orders of the country. And if any inhabitant shall neglect or refuse to observe them, they shall have power to levy the appointed penalties by distress. . . . . The freemen of every town, or township, shall have full power to choose yearly, or for less time, out of themselves a convenient number of fit men to order the planting or pru- dential3 occasions of that town, according to instructions
Winthrop. I. 160.
2 Winthrop, II. 55. These laws were not printed, but were published in manuscript. See Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, VIII.
3 " What is intended by the word ' prudential,' when thus appropriated, is not very easy to determine. Be it what it may, all other town affairs are determined in a general town meeting of all the inhabitants." Hutchinson's Hist. Mass. Bay, I. 175, note.
7
The Founders of Boston.
79]
given them in writing, provided nothing be done by them contrary to the public laws and orders of the country ; pro- vided also the number of such select persons be not above nine."1 This was copied in substance from an order passed by the general court in 1635." It forms the basis of the town system.
The early town government in Boston did not differ in any essential respect from the local government in other villages and townships in the colony. Although the " Bos- ton men " were prompt to give to their new abode the name of the ancient city which they were taken to represent, there was no disposition to copy, as a whole, or to any considerable extent, the system of local government under which they had been living. It is true that they often followed English prec- edents ;3 but in the beginning they followed them, it may be said, rather unconsciously, and only to meet the practical necessities of their development. It is natural, therefore, that the parts of the English system which they assimilated should have been those parts which were more especially of
Chief Justice Shaw said (Willard v. Newburyport, 12 Pick. 227), " Perhaps no better approximation to an exact description (of the term prudential affairs) can be made than to say that they embrace that large class of miscellaneous subjects, affecting the accommodation and conven- ience of the inhabitants, which have been placed under the municipal juris- diction of towns by statute or usage." On this question of " usage " see note to page 28.
1 Collections Mass. Hist. Soc., 3d Series, VIII. 227-228.
" Records of Mass., I. 172.
3 The following vote, adopted by the general court in 1647 (some time after the first steps had been taken to form local-government organizations), will be of interest in this connection : "It is agreed by the Court, to the end we may have the better light for making and proceeding about laws, that there shall be these books following procured for the use of the Court from time to time : two of Sir Edward Cooke upon Littleton ; two of the Books of Entryes ; two of Sir Edward Cooke upon Magna Charta; two of the New Forms of the Law ; two of Dalton's Justice of Peace ; two of Sir Edward Cooke's Reports." It would appear from this that the magistrates were beginning to seek for precedents of a more modern character than were to be found in " Moses, his Judicials."
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The City Government of Boston. [80
Teutonic origin, adopted by people who, under similar circum- stances, had worked out a practical system of local self- government.
Although Boston was not for some years the most populous town in the colony, it was from the beginning the centre of its political and religious life. In the development of its local government it occupied somewhat the same relation to the other towns in the colony that London occupied, between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, to the large towns of Eng- land.1 The rights which the freemen of Boston claimed and exercised in the management of their local affairs, the legisla- tion which they procured from time to time with a view to promote their local interests, formed the precedents for similar action on the part of the freemen in other communities.
II. APPLICATION FOR INCORPORATION IN 1650.
During the period of nearly two centuries between the establishment of the town of Boston and the incorporation of the city, that is, from 1630 to 1822, various schemes were suggested for a general reorganization of the town system. Although the system had grown up in an irregular way, and was greatly wanting in symmetry and consistency, it was admirably adapted to the practical wants of the people ; and although a desire for change manifested itself from time to time, the majority of the inhabitants could not agree upon any plan that suited them better until the increase of popu- lation made the town system impracticable. The first appli- cation for a special form of government was made in 1650. The general court ordered that a charter of incorporation be granted, "provided the articles and terms, privileges and immu- nities asked may be such as rationally should appear (respect-
1 See Stubb's Eng. Const., I. 411.
9
Application for Incorporation.
81]
ing the mean condition of the country) fit for the court to grant";1 and the petitioners were instructed to have their plan ready for examination at the next session of the court. No plan was presented, however, and it does not appear from the contemporary records that any further action was taken.
This brings up the question, which is worth examining a little in this connection, whether the company had any author- ity, under the charter of 1628-9, to create municipal or other corporations. If the authority existed it was by implication, as a necessary part of the scheme of government provided by the charter, and not by any grant in direct terms. The char- ter granted to Gorges in 1639 established a provincial gov- ernment, and in specific terms gave the proprietor, " his heirs and assigns," power " to erect, raise and build cities, boroughs and towns, and to grant letters or charters of incorporation, with all liberties and things belonging to the same." The first charter granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company established a corporation for certain purposes, with scarcely more than the customary powers to municipal corporations to manage their own affairs and control the admission of new members. Unless it was something more than a corporation, it certainly had no power to establish other corporations. That was a prerogative of the King.
The only provision in the charter which can be held as implying this power is that in which the company is author- ized "to establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes and ordinances, directions and instruc- tions," not contrary to the laws of the realm of England, " for
1 This was probably intended as a warning to the petitioners not to present any such ambitious scheme of local government as had been put into operation in Gorgeana eight years before. Winthrop says, in his journal, "They have lately made Agamenticus, a poor village, a corporation, and a tailor their Mayor." Gorgeana (Agamenticus, now the town of York) was the first municipal organization on this continent to receive a city charter in the English form. It had, at the time, a population of about 250 inhabitants, and more than half the adult males were probably required to fill the offices provided in the charter.
10
The City Government of Boston. [82
settling the forms and ceremonies of government and magis- tracy fit and necessary, . and for naming and settling all sorts of officers, both superior and inferior, which they shall find needful, and the distinguishing and setting forth of the several duties, powers and limits of every such office and place." This is a very comprehensive pro- vision ; but it certainly did not include in specific terms what the Gorges charter did, namely, the power to erect and incor- porate cities, boroughs and towns. That some at least of the original members of the company understood the limitations of the charter is shown by the fact that in 1632 the pastor and elders at Watertown advised the freemen not to pay a tax levied on them by the Court of Assistants, on the ground that the court occupied the same position as, and had no more au- thority than, the mayor and aldermen of a municipal corpora- tion. In several decisions of the highest court of Massachu- setts since the Revolution it has been held that the mere naming of towns by the Court of Assistants gave them, in effect, corporate powers. Mr. Chief Justice Shaw, an able lawyer and a careful student of the early history of New England, stated, in the course of an elaborate opinion upon a noted case which came before the Supreme Court,1 that "the charter was not merely a grant of property within the realm of England ; but it contained provisions for the establishment of a separate dependent government under the allegiance of the King; and the government thereby constituted was invested with all the civil and political powers to enable it to establish and govern the colony, and to make laws for that purpose not repugnant to the laws of England."
In a subsequent decision 2 he said : " The terms ' planta- tion,' ' town' and ' township' seem to be used almost indis- criminately to indicate a cluster or body of persons inhabiting
1 Mass. Rep., Commonwealth v. Alger, 7 Cush. 65.
2 Commonwealth v. Roxbury, 9 Gray 485. A valuable historical note, written by Horace Gray, then reporter of the decisions, now one of the justices of the U. S. Supreme Court, is appended.
11
Application for Incorporation.
83]
near each other ; and when they became designated by name, certain powers were conferred upon them by general orders and laws, such as to manage their own prudential concerns, to elect deputies and the like, which in effect made them municipal corporations, and no formal acts of incorporation were granted until long afterward."
After quoting the order of the Court of Assistants (Sept. 7, O. S., 1630), "that Trimountain shall be called Boston ; Mattapan, Dorchester ; and the town upon Charles River, Watertown," he adds : " We doubt whether these places had any formal act of incorporation during the existence of the colony, or any other recognition by the government of a corporate existence." An examination of the records shows that towns were not expressly authorized to sue and be sued until 1694, three years after the province charter was granted, nor formally incorporated until 1785, five years after the first State constitution was adopted.
Hutchinson,1 in describing the condition of local govern- ment at the time Boston made the application for incorpo- ration in 1650, says: "Not only the town of Boston, but every town in the old colony was to many purposes a cor- porate body ; they might sue and be sued, might choose their own officers for managing the affairs of the town, and the selectmen were judges of the breach of the by-laws of the town." The company did not hesitate to incorporate trade organizations as early as 1648, with power to make orders for managing their trade, and all affairs thereunto belonging, and annex reasonable penalties for the breach of the same, said orders not to be enforced until passed and allowed by the court of the county, or the Court of Assistants .? And two years later a formal charter of incorporation was granted to Harvard College. The fact that no such charters were
1 Hist. Mass. Bay, 2d ed., London, 1760, I. 175, note.
9 Mass. Records, I., p. 25. The master shoemakers and master coopers were incorporated at that time.
12
The City Government of Boston. [84
granted to towns shows that the general court was at least doubtful of its powers.
The incorporation of business or educational institutions would not be likely to attract much attention in England ; but if a city charter had been granted to Boston, it might have brought on a discussion which the leading members of the company were anxious to avoid.1
III. OTHER EFFORTS TO CHANGE THE TOWN ORGANIZATION.
From 1650 to 1708 it does not appear that any efforts were made to change the existing system of town govern- ment in Boston. In the latter year, at "a meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of Boston," the selectmen represented that the town-orders and by-laws were not properly executed, for the reason, mainly, that there was no proper head or town officer empowered for that purpose, " the law having put the execution of town orders into the hands of the justices only, who are not town but county officers." It cannot be expected, they said, that county officers should take the trouble and care, or make it so much their business to execute the town rules and by-laws as local officers specially appointed for the purpose ; and good order was not to be expected under such an administration.2 In accordance with their recommendation a committee was appointed to draft a charter of incorporation.
At the annual meeting in the following year such a draft
1 It may be interesting in this connection to note that the Massachusetts Company became, by purchase of Gorges' grandson, in 1677, Lord Paramount of Maine, and as such had authority, within the territory covered by the patent, to incorporate cities, etc., down, certainly, to the time when its own charter was cancelled.
2 Boston Town Records : 8th Report Record Com'rs, 55, 58.
13
Efforts to Change Organization.
85]
was submitted,1 but a majority of the voters were unwilling even to consider the subject. There was a decisive vote against calling another meeting for that purpose, and also against accepting the report of the committee. "A dema- gogue " called out, " It is a whelp now ; it will be a lion by and by ; knock it in the head. Mr. Moderator, put the ques- tion." "Some of the best men in the town," says Hutchin- son, writing of it forty or fifty years later, " despairing of doing any service, would never be present in a town meeting afterwards." 2
The statement made by the selectmen that the existing laws " put the execution of town orders into the hands of the jus- tices only," would, if taken literally, give a very erroneous impression of the administration of town affairs. After the province charter had been proclaimed, an act was passed (Chap. 28, Province Laws, 1692-3) providing that there should be chosen annually, in March, by the freeholders and other inhabitants of each town, ratable at twenty pounds estate to one single rate besides the poll, "three, five, seven or nine persons, able and discreet, of good conversation, inhabitants within the town, to be selectmen, or townsmen, and overseers of the poor where other persons shall not be par- ticularly chosen to that office; also to nominate and choose a town clerk, a commissioner for assessments, constables, sur- veyors of highways, tything-men, fence-viewers, clerks of the market, sealers of leather and other ordinary town officers"- namely : a town treasurer, assessors of taxes, collectors, sur- veyors of lumber, and hog-reeves. The selectmen, when author- ized in writing by the town for that purpose, were " empow- ered to make necessary rules, orders and by-laws for the
1 The plan reported by the committee was not entered on the records, and cannot now be found among the reports and papers of that year. The committee was composed of thirty-one persons, and included the principal townsmen, among others, Samuel Sewall, Isaac Addington, Elisha Cook, Elisha Hutchinson, Paul Dudley, Col. Winthrop, and Daniel Oliver.
$ Hutchinson, Hist. Mass. Bay, I. 175, note.
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The City Government of Boston. [86
directing, managing and ordering the prudential affairs of the town as they might judge most conducing to the peace, welfare and good order thereof, and to annex penalties for the observ- ance of the same not exceeding twenty shillings for one offense ; provided they be not repugnant to the laws of the province." By a law passed a few years later (Laws of 1695- 6, Ch. 9, Sec. 6), the requirement that town orders should be approved by the justices in quarter sessions was repealed, and it was provided that "all town orders and by-laws, made or to be made by the towns, or selectmen by instruction, should be binding on all the inhabitants of the town, the pen- alties for breach of any of them to be levied by warrant of distress from the selectmen or town clerk by their order." Upon conviction of any such breach, the party grieved was allowed an appeal to the justices in quarter sessions. This appears to give the selectmen judicial power as well as legis- lative and executive power. But Hutchinson says that pre- vious to 1691 "the selectmen were judges of the breach of the by-laws of the town, the penalty of which could not exceed twenty shillings," but that "under the new charter the select- men have no judiciary power."1 It is clear that under the province charter all judges, justices of the peace and other officers of the courts were to be appointed by the Governor and council ; and it is evident from the representations made by the selectmen that they had been deprived of some of their powers, judicial or executive, or both, which they had for- merly exercised without any authority in law.
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