should contain as many as twenty-five legal voters, it might petition the board of county commissioners and obtain a township organization, even though the adjacent townships in the same county should remain under county government only. Five years later the same provision was adopted by Dakota, and under it township government is steadily spreading. Grades of township government. Two distinct grades of township government are to be observed in the states west of the Alleghanies; the one has the town-meeting for deliberative purposes, the other has not. In Ohio and Indiana, which derived their local institutions largely from Pennsylvania, there is no such town-meeting, the administrative offices are more or less concentrated in a board of trustees, and the town is quite subordinate to the county. The principal features of this system have been reproduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. The other system was that which we have seen beginning in Michigan, under the influence of New York and New England. Here the town-meeting, with legislative powers, is always present. The most noticeable feature of the Michigan system is the relation between township and county, which was taken from New York. The county board is composed of the supervisors of the several townships, and thus represents the townships. It is the same in Illinois. held by some writers that this is the most perfect form of local government,1 but on the other hand the objection is made that county boards thus constituted are too large. We have seen that in the states in question there are not less than 16, and sometimes more than 20, townships in each county. In a board 1 Howard, Local Const. Hist., passim. 2 It is 2 Bemis, Local Government in Michigan, J. H. U. Studies, I., v. of 16 or 20 members it is hard to fasten responsibility upon anybody in particular; and thus it becomes possible to have "combinations," and to indulge in that exchange of favours known as "log-rolling," which is one of the besetting sins of all large representative bodies. Responsibility is more concentrated in the smaller county boards of Massachusetts, Wis consin, and Minnesota. An excellent result of the centralizaUnited absence of tion in the States. It is one signal merit of the peaceful and untrammelled way in which American institutions have grown up, the widest possible scope being allowed to individual and local preferences, that different states adopt different methods of attaining the great end at which all are aiming in common, good government. One part of our vast country can profit by the experience of other parts, and if any system or method thus comes to prevail everywhere in the long run, it is likely to be by reason of its intrinsic excellence. Our country affords an admirable field for the study of the general principles which lie at the foundations of universal history. Governments, large and small, are growing up all about us, and in such wise that we can watch the processes of growth, and learn lessons which, after making due allowances for difference of circumstance, are very helpful in the study of other times and countries. The general tendency toward the spread of township government in the more recently settled parts of the United States is unmistakable, and I have already remarked upon the influence of the public school system in aiding this tendency. The school district, as a preparation for the self-governing township, is already exerting its influence in Colorado, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washing ton. Township is germinating in the South. Something similar is going on in the southern states, as already hinted in the case of South Carolina. Local taxation for school purposes has also been established in Kentucky and Tennessee, in both Virginias, and elsewhere. There has thus begun a most natural and wholesome movement, which might easily be checked, with disastrous results, by the injudicious appropriation of national revenue for the government aid of southern schools. It is to be hoped that throughout the southern states, as formerly in Michigan, the self-governing school district may prepare the way for the self-governing township, with its deliberative town-meeting. Such a growth must needs be slow, inasmuch as it requires long political training on the part of the negroes and the lower classes of white people; but it is along such a line of development that such political training can best be acquired; and in no other way is complete harmony between the two races so likely to be secured. Dr. Edward Bemis, who in a profoundly interesting essay has called attention to this function of the school district as a stage in the evolution of the township, remarks also upon the fact that "it is in the local Woman suf- government of the school district that woman frage. suffrage is being tried." In several states women may vote for school committees, or may be elected to school committees, or to sundry administrative school offices. At present (1894) there are not less than twenty-one states in which women have school suffrage. In Colorado and Wyoming women have full suffrage, voting at municipal, state, and national elections. In Kansas they have municipal 1 Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, J. H. U. Studies, I., v. suffrage, and a constitutional amendment granting them full suffrage is now awaiting ratification. In England, it may be observed, unmarried women and widows who pay taxes vote not only on school matters, but generally in the local elections of vestries, boroughs, and poor-law unions. In the new Parish Councils Bill this municipal suffrage is extended to married women. In the Isle of Man women vote for members of Parliament. In Australia they have long had municipal suffrage, and in 1893 they were endowed with full rights of suffrage in New Zealand. The historical reason why the suffrage has so generally been restricted to men is perhaps to be sought in the conditions under which voting originated. In primeval times voting was probably adopted as a substitute for fighting. The smaller and presumably weaker party yielded to the larger without an actual trial of physical strength; heads were counted instead of being broken. Accordingly it was only the warriors who became voters. The restriction of political activity to men has also probably been emphasized by the fact that all the higher civilizations have passed through a well-defined patriarchal stage of society in which each household was represented by its oldest warrior. From present indications it would seem that under the conditions of modern industrial society the arrangements that have so long subsisted are likely to be very essentially altered. QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT. 1. Describe the origin and development of the town-meeting in Michigan. 2. Describe the settling of southern Illinois. 3. Describe the settling of northern Illinois. 4. What difference in thought and feeling existed between these sections? 5. What systems of local government came into rivalry in Illinois, and why? 6. What compromise between them was put into the state constitution? 7. Which system, the town or the county, has shown the greater vitality, and why? 8. What obstacles has the town system to work against ? 9. Show how the principle of local option in government has been applied in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Dakota. 10. What two grades of town government exist west of the Alleghanies? 11. What objection exists to large county boards of govern ment? 12. Why is our country an excellent field for the study of the principles of government? 13. What unmistakable tendency in the case of township government is noticeable? 14. Speak of township government in the South. 15. What part have women in the affairs of the school district in many states ? 6. What is the historical reason why suffrage has been restricted to men? SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS. It may need to be repeated (see page 12) that it is not expected that each pupil shall answer all the miscellaneous questions put, or respond to all the suggestions made in this book. Indeed, the teacher may be pardoned if now and then he finds it difficult himself to answer a question, - particularly if it is framed to provoke thought rather than lead to a conclusion, or if it is better fitted for some other community or part of the country than that in which he lives. Let him therefore divide the questions among his pupils, or assign to them selected questions. In cases that call for special knowledge, let the topics go to pupils who may have exceptional facilities for information at home. The important point is not so much the settlement of all the questions proposed as it is the encouragement of the inquiring and thinking spirit on the part of the pupil. |