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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