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• THE ATL ANTI AN 7 BERNARD SUTTLER, Editor, Publisher and Journalist, One of the Best Posted Men in the South. Commission Government By Bernard Suttler. The design of this article is neither to condemn nor to approve of the commission form of government for municipalities, but rather to discuss the question briefly from the standpoint of the private citizen who desires only good and effective government. The argument used by the opponents of commission government that it is undemocratic is not well taken. In every case where it has been established it has been preceded by a vote of the qualified electors and it therefore represents the will of a majority of the people. In the absence of any system of minority representation we have no other way of settling what is democratic than the popu lar vote, and then obeying the dictates of the majority. Commission government therefore, is as truly democratic as any thing we have had in the past, or now have in the present. Some men have an idea that democracy consists in a large number of office holders, while others imagine that only what they call “representa tive” government is democracy. A pure democracy may exist with few office holders on the one hand, and on the other it may exist under a system of direct legisla tion by the people. It is well for us to understand what we mean by democracy, and my idea of it is a government which represents truly the will of the people. Measured by this standard, and I believe it a correct one, there are democratic features in many countries, but of real democratic government there is little. New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Norway either have reached, or are getting close to real democracy. Great Britain and the United States have the shell of democracy, but not the substance. The mere fact that one town is ruled by five men and another by thirty does not make the first undemocratic and the second democratic. Nor is the reverse necessarily true. The real vital question is the will of the people. Not the pretense of the politician that he is striving to do the will of the people, but that will actually in action is democracy. I believe with De Tocque- ville that “the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.” Hence I am not afraid of the people for if they rule badly it is their own act, and only by actual practice can the people learn to rule. Commission government has this in its favor—it eliminates some of the middlemen and we have been cursed with far too many of these middlemen, and it is through them that our civic life has been run off the main line of democracy and sidetracked on switches of bossism, personal influence, the interests, partisan humbug, and like evils. Can we trust five men where thirty or fifty or an hundred have failed? Certainly not, if we give to the five men the same latitude that we give to the fifty. But it is observable that in every case where commission government has been instituted it is accompanied with the Initiative—the Referendum—and the Recall. In these lie the very essence of democracy and any community so hedging around its public officials can have real democracy whether the of ficials be few or many. The radical advantage in having a few men lies in the quickness of action obtainable from a small body as against the slow and cumbrous methods of large bodies. Under commission government coupled with the initiative, referen dum and recall all legislative power rests in the hands of the people the commission being always subject to the initiative and referendum while in purely executive matters the recall gives the people the power to remove members of the commission for improper executive action, without the formality of trial or impeachment. Modern municipal government naturally co-ordinates into five great departments: Public Health, Public Education, Public Safety, Public Works and Public Revenue. This gives good reason why five commissioners are better than three, which are too few, or than seven which are too many, for with five each great interest has a head. The opponents of commission government argue that if it is so good a thing for the city, why not apply to the State and to the whole Republic. The answer to that is that the break down in America has come first in municipal government, which touches the citizen most directly, but without venturing on pro phecy I am prepared to say that the present trend in our State and in our republic portends some radical changes in the coming years in these larger units. Power must be vested in the people—the whole people. Nothing short of that will suffice. It does not matter, as to the name, whether we call it commission government, or use some other name, the people must rule in fact, for that is democracy and nothing else is. One fallacy is already obtruding itself into the arguments of those who favor the commission side of the question. They argue that we can get better men because we can pay more. I question that and I question it sharply. Prom the present city council T could pick five men who could handle Atlanta’s business efficiently. Whenever we make the pay the vital point in the selection of men we make a fundamental error. Salaries of three thousand dollars for four and thirty-six hun dred dollars for the fifth are sufficient, and yet such salaries would not be any temptation to money making men of affairs, and I would