550 Chronicles of the Cape Fear Rwer

managing different departments of the municipality, with re-
sulting clash of authority and responsibility. Over them all,
the Board of Audit and Finance held control of the purse
strings.

The inconvenience of transacting business with so many de-
partments managing the affairs of the city without codrdination,
and naturally therefore with lack of economy, became so appar-
ent that at an election, when the question was submitted, the
people almost unanimously adopted the commission form of
government. In 1911, a council of five members superseded all
of the boards previously existing, and for nearly five years the
city has been under this form of government. Although some
good has been accomplished by simplifying governmental meth-
ods, much more might be done, it is believed, by the employment
of a municipal manager, as is being done in some other cities,
and by following more closely the methods adopted by business
corporations.

The commission form of municipal government has not
proved a success, except in cases where notorious graft prevailed,
and the tendency of municipal reform seems to be upon the
lines adopted successfully by the Germans of having trained
managers and concentrated control. As Price Collier says:
“No State can make men. No State can produce wealth and
worth. These three—men, and wealth, and worth—are pro-
duced, and produced only, where men measure themselves
against men for the mastery over the fruits of the earth, with-
out adventitious aids of any kind and under the protection of
laws that all make and all obey. Our mistakes and our political
troubles have mostly arisen from a wrong interpretation of
‘oovernment by the people.’ It has never meant, and can never
be successful when it is interpreted as meaning, that each indi-
vidual shall take an active part in government. ‘This is the
catch-penny doctrine preached from the platform by the dema-
gogue. The real spirit of ‘government by the people’ is merely
that they should at all times have control, and keep control, of
their governors.”

Arthur J. Brinton, in the Dispatch, says: ‘“‘When James
Bryce, late British Ambassador to the United States, a keen,
acute, brilliant observer of American affairs, wrote a quarter of
a century ago that the Americans knew how to do some things
well, but did not know how to run their city governments, the
observation hurt. Here is Mr. Bryce’s exact language: “There

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Peace Restored 551

is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicu-
ous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the Na-
tional Government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the
people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant
compared with the extravagance, corruption, and mismanage-
ment which mark the administration of most of the great cities.
There is not a city with a population exceeding two hundred
thousand where the poison germs have not sprung into a vigor-
ous life. In some of the smaller ones, down to seventy thousand,
it needs no microscope to note the results of their growth.’
“Such criticism stung. American cities, feeling the wound,
have sought a soothing salve for their hurt feelings in revolu-

tionizing the form of their city governments. Mayors have
served them ill; municipal officials have been corrupt. Away

with them! Let us get our city governments on a business
basis; let us run them as we run our private business.”

The present mayor of Wilmington, Parker Quince Moore, is
a worthy descendant of the leading spirits of the colonial Cape
Fear described by the British Governor Burrington in his off-
cial dispatches to the Home Government as the “pestiferous
Moore family,” who vexed the Royal Government at Brunswick
by their revolutionary tendencies, and later, on the 19th of Feb-
ruary, 1766, advocated the first armed resistance on the Ameri-

can continent to the authority of their Sovereign Lord, King
George.

Mayor Moore is not only to the manner born, but his busi-

ness training, his patriotic spirit, and the charm of his pleasing
personality have established him in the respect and confidence

of all classes of our people. To my request for an expression

of his observations of munici al gov
e _
sponded as follows: pa’ government he has. kindly re

country for better municipal government, and, if the views
attributed to an eminent statesman—that we had the worst-

governed municipalities in the world—is even approximately
correct, there is need for change. While we may not be quite
prepared to accede to so severe an arraignment, many of us are
fully convinced that the ordinary government of our cities and
towns is very far from being noticeable for the effective and eco-
pes: management usually prevailing in other corporations.
The first move made in the direction of advantageous change
was in Galveston, where what has been popularly called the com-

eee me ey Me om a